Reflections: White Scorpion

Three to Three

Numbness covers the back of my jaw like swollen skin

sliding across the lower row, my tongue feels suture

stubble as a hand might feel the face before shaving;

planetary rover eyes survey the room as one might expect

before clicking terrain pictures and surrounding

environments, learning to exist or perish; pillows

situated along the lower back permit accommodations

while permitting a false sense of security, allowing a

moment of relief to occur so early in the day;

stretching out like gymnasts, cats lounge on the lounger

waiting for the silence of the sun’s rising and the

treat that accompanies my presence in their room;

three to three, the clock face reads and much easier

than reading the face of students that will be in the

eight o’clock class five hours from now - it’s hard to

tell these days what these day will bring; there is nothing

to do but to think about thinking and about what I

should or should not be thinking as though, I could really

self-direct my conscious streams of illumination, as if

a match was lit instead of a bulb and I could somehow

blink it off and on simply with my intellect that many people

around me believe left me years ago, leaving me with

sleepless nights and an insatiable need to urinate; still,

life goes on . . . as it should, I would assume, and I am

free as I always have been to pursue whatever roles I choose,

regardless of how those roles are perceived by those who

think they know me because they know me; when, in

reality they know only that which I allow them to know,

providing me with few friends, but never vulnerable;

there is an emptiness where my back molar used to be

and no longer will I be crushing ice, at least on that side

and I wonder if that emptiness lies not just inside me

but within me, preventing me from seeing the feeling

that has abandoned me this morning at three to three.



10Aug12