To Tamar's entry entitled False Cheer, I am reminded of something I wrote back when I was a living in Manhattan with my two young children quite a few years ago. I called it Yesterday:
Yesterday when the sky was blue I witnessed a man hit by a car speeding down Broadway at Houston. The man flew into the air, did a half spin over the hood of the car, and crumbled to the ground. 513-CWT backed up, drove around the motionless man, looked back once, saw he was only another drunk, and drove off fast down Broadway. I then went into the subway with my child who hadn’t seen it and the woman in the ticket cage said, with urgency in her voice, “Smile! Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!” and my son said “Is that true?” and I was still too shaken and stunned to understand why she dared to tell me how to feel.
I feel my reality.
I feel my separate being.
I want to feel your soul
in my body.
Enough of separate realities when we are together.
My identity is my own, my realities is where I am.
If you are there where I am, need I say more.
Maybe the knees of 513-CWT shook as
he drove off and maybe they didn’t.
Maybe the bum was badly hurt and mabe he wasn’t.
513-CWT couldn’t go too far unknown.
So he learned: (a) to drive more carefully
or (b) to drive off faster before anyone could
see his number.
I would like to know where you are.
I would like to feel that I am not always alone.
Surrounded by smiles on the grocery shelves,
I look over my shopping list and discover
I did not include my feelings.
I would have to make a decision on the aisle
which ones I wanted and which I did not.
Loneliness, no, happiness, definitely,
joy and freedom. Love and fear and hate and
yes give me pain and loneliness too.
Give me my depressions. On a tray with
orange juice and a warm bed.
Give me my joys that I have earned.
Allow me the happiness I always feared.
My smiles are my own.