Kinda Sorta

You speak to me
and I realize suddenly
I don’t know what that means,
what it might mean
over the course
to the end of this road.

Maybe some day
I’ll be replaced. Maybe
you won’t feel a need to speak.
Maybe I’ll even have no need
to listen to it. We will sit
in comfortable quiet

with nothing to say. Or maybe
there will be another person
sitting here in my place,
seat warm from my ass, wondering
what happened, how he got here?
That’s kinda sorta how I got here.

How I got here…it’s a puzzle.
after all. One minute I was elsewhere,
remember; next minute I was here
and not a clue of how it happened.
But I carry on the conversation
as if I was here all along…

One minute I’m here
in my place and the next minute
the someone I am not
is not here now and I’m still over there
in whatever place you and I agree to call
that place.

I don’t know where I am.
I nod and smile in the right places.
I touch your arm with my right hand.
I touch my own face with my left hand.
Feeling nothing, I sit back.
I am in my element: comfortable quiet,

or so I’ve been told.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T