Inward
My eyes are on yours
Looking for my body in the dark pools of your pupils
And my mind is in a dark suburban town
Where the milkman delivers clanking bottles
To the homes of disenchanted Gen Xers.
You label me an old soul but I digress.
I am the broken bones you find on a beach
On your lonely vacation, too worn down to
Provide an exact time frame.
Ageless.
I could have been lying dormant as
An existential crisis since the late seventies
When you made a suicide pact with the neighbor
You would never see again
Or preceding the birth of the universe.
Buddhists say that there is a source of
And path out of suffering.
But they do not know, do not say
How to save yourself from a cycle of
Emotional disconnect, of perpetual floating
On the sands of time,
How to embrace introspection’s anchor
Like a long-lost brother.
Untitled, 2014 by Minna Gilligan
Copyright Credit: NOTE: This poem is part of “Pethetic Little Thing,” curated by Tavi Gevinson. Read the rest of the portfolio in Poetry’s July/August 2015 issue.
Source: Poetry (July/August 2015)