≥ I ≤

It’s like this book I’m reading,

Where when I stop I mark my place.

I don’t know how long I will be

Before it is finished,

But there are only so many pages.

I’ll get there eventually, but this place

Is charged with electric excitement.

I am surrounded by complex and colorful personas

Shrouded in ethereal soliloquy

The air is shifting in measureless phrases

Molecules shaking like sound waves

To metaphysical music

This place I’ve marked

Is a deep indigo

Enigmatic and oceanic

Light comes to roost in places it shouldn’t

Things become real and lose their meaning

Replaced with nonessentials

Imagination faces a limitation

And waits for you on the other side of it

This place I’ve marked

Is where I lose.

My form, my mind, and my sense of self

The illusion of the individual

Thaws and trickles away

Ceasing to be the person I was

To become the people around me

Poking peepholes in their walls

Of flesh and blood and skin and bones

I look in and see

They too are reading books

Marking their places.

And flipping through the remainder

Of my own pages I find

I’ve already read this story