An Identity Crisis
We may ask ourselves: Who is this person? while watching the lover pull a hair off their tongue or wiping their upper lip with the back of their hand or eating a bowl of oatmeal on the edge of the bed to catch the news or drinking a dark beer at M’Lady’s in SoHo.
Because sometimes we get lost in the bustle of it all. And these questions might come fast as a sigh of relief and they may vanish as fast as the beer glides down the throat, the hair comes off the tongue, the sweaty upper lip smooth as butter puckers into an
Oh.
We might get in our cars, make faces at ourselves in the rearview mirror, eat our breakfasts in the bathroom to save time and sweat with our lovers and then one Tuesday we realize that the person we once were has changed so many times over, has fallen into the groove, into the pattern of days, is as predictable as the setting sun
so we may ask ourselves: Who is this while watching our lover pull a hair off their tongue or wiping their upper lip with the back of a hand
and it might feel answered, we might think we recognize them.
That we know who we are.
So we go on and make more faces in the mirror, changing the natural shape of our mouths or seeing what our eyes would look by pulling our hair too tight, and we might keep driving,
keep walking
keep drinking,
keep eating,
nothing truly stops, ever,
bury the father,
clock into work,
tell them that you love them if that’s what they want to hear,
clock out,
keep going,
we might feel almost sure we’ve got it,
that we are in control.
Keep going to bed, keep waking up.
Don’t stop, don’t ask,
buy the birthday cards,
celebrate the years,
don’t move from where you are,
trade one relationship for the next
go to bed,
wake up
You’re still there.
Look: you’re still here.
