quasI

“quasI”

(I’m doing the a to z challenge this year using the last letter of the word rather than the first because letter order is an arbitrary social convention not grounded in ontological reality. And because I’m capricious. – S.B.)

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Do you still dream of who you thought you’d be?

Or is to quasi-be, indeed enough –

Do you still feel the first time that you felt?

Or have the nerves been worn away with rough –

 

For smooth were once the edges of your hopes,

And pure was once the life you thought ideal;

The minutes slip away into the void,

And soon you feel you can no longer feel —

 

There was a time that touch was everything.

The world you’d touch, the one who would touch you;

The little touches in the art you’d make

And how you’d keep the best up close, and true —

 

The hopeful and prosaic worlds diverge,

A quasi-life, a semblance, all that’s left:

And even though you have, you yet have not,

And find yourself, not lonely, but bereft

 

You stare into the silence and the void —

Your world a fading, aging Polaroid —

The spring new come, just one more time to fall —

And wonder why you ever dreamed

At all