Small Talk

I am looking at a photograph
of my sister with her baby in her arms,
cross-legged, barefoot, old t-shirt.

I am thinking of all the things
that I do not want,
and all the things I say I want,
and how there’s no difference
between them.

I am thinking of how I cannot
communicate this simple truth to anybody.

Sitting across from my doctor,
using words words like excited or grateful
or hopeful
or worried
when I have not felt these things in years.
All I feel is distance.

How can I say this?
Doctor, I am speaking to you as if from a great distance.
Not a distance bridged by telephone or satellite.
Not a distance bridged by train
or a boat rocking on the sea.
I am on the other side of the void,
the mirrored light-years of entropy.
I am speaking to you from a place
which is the dim, cool average
of the end of the universe.
I am speaking to you from a place
where there is nothing to want but nothing,
where I am a cavity disappearing within a cavity.
The abyss looks back indeed,
not howling and shrieking,
not menacing.
Flat and incurious but unable to look away.
The eyes of the dead fixed in a disinterested stare.
I, too, do not know how to look away.

Three days ago a piece of hot metal
fell upon my breast.
It burned a hole through my skin,
and it kept on burning.
I calmly removed it as if from someone else’s body.
I want it to hurt because I want to feel.
I want it to hurt so I know I’m still alive.

That is the distance from which I am speaking to you.