Thoughts About Thoughts

Her spongy, rubber soles spoke as she walked.

“Pluosh, Pluosh”.

Old trees heard her pass but said nothing.

Tilted on a wire 

far, far above her

a lone crow shrieked.

“Not my message”, she thought.

And it wasn’t. 

Just a voice out there in the cool, early morning.

It made her think about thoughts.

Like a stream of ramble. 

Between the brain and the tongue.

So much,

so very much lost in apathy.

Thoughts suspended without the shape of words.

She pictured a meteorite as it plunged down.

Crushing her as it fell.

Her thoughts disseminated.

It didn’t concern her to lose her life.

But her thoughts……?

She was careful to pass over the railroad tracks.

Slowed around the corner cafe.

Under the canopy of trees.

“If I write them down…”

She realized they would no longer be thoughts.

But words in sentences.

She opened the cranky lock to her apartment.

Set down her jangle of keys.

And sat.

She searched out the window on her comforting couch.

 

She tried to force silence to her thoughts.

She focused on colors and shapes. 

Moving and fixed objects.

Air and sky.

Her imagined meteorite loomed over her,

The thought of it too large to delete.

“The best I can do is listen

Sift through random, fair, foolish, 

deceptive, poisonous, fantastical, practical, 

fearful and dreamy thoughts. 

Own them for what they are…thoughts.”

“I’ll listen, write down some, speak some.

Then I must let the rest go.” 

Her meteorite dispersed into fine dust.

Her thoughts about thoughts

Led her to a familiar, fragile wooden box.

Gently she lifted the lid to reveal her existential wanderings.

“I’ve been on this zizaggity path many times before.

I am and will continue to be.

Until I am not.” 

She peered in and slowly unapologetically closed the lid.

Her cell phone buzzed

And brought her back.

“Hello,” she heard herself answer.

"The human spirit is virtually indestructible, and its ability to rise from the ashes remains as long as the body draws breath."  Alice Miller