Is it the string of my spine

and the bubble of my thoughts

that form the essence of the container?

This box of me?

 

Do the jumble of vibrations in this box strike black and white keys

to sound a discord…or a harmony?

When the vapor of life circles and swirls around me,

I might be courageous and take the challenge.

 

I allow my peanut butter and honey heart

to join in the movement of a dance!

It is the untamed dance of a wild woman.

A dance that is all mine! (within this box of me)

 

When I feel muffled in here, I just break up and away,

rise to the surface, emerge!

Oblique, random sprouting? Maybe.

Definitive, acute, isosceles? Maybe.

 

Perhaps I am a free-flow, spilling into cups,

but once in a while, there are snatches of insistence.

I hear their demands, “Take a ticket, stand in line,

answer me, think first, sit still, bite your tongue!”

 

Instead, in opposition, I sharpen my pencil tip,

and watch my steps–till I reach the sky.

I breathe deep, and allow the voices to come again.

Listening to further demands, “Perform, serve, nurture, give up, give in!”

 

But, ah, I must swim inside the pools of experience first.

Live life. Then die.

There’s a proper order, don’t you know?

And I ask merely to touch the golden ring—just once.

 

In the kitchen I bake compositions to satisfy my hunger.

Strange how it tickles, a little whisper of fun in here,

I feel it washing over me, still locked inside my box,

but with the gift of a treasure map now! (age has its rewards)

 

Joy, anxiety, love, guilt, grief, forgiveness, confusion, and competence,

all squirming, twirling, hanging-in-there—all of it

smashed inside this box,

inside this neat, happy, little box of me.