Sentinel

Lately, I've been having a hard time reeling in my mind. Ironic for a yoga instructor. For someone who claims to know how. I don't, even if I try. And sometimes, I manage to help others while mine's slip-slip-slipping away from me.

I keep thinking I'll do better.

I keep thinking if only I got my foot in. Only just the one. Don't gotta be the left or the right. I trip on both, regardless. Last 24 hours, I fell on my face twice. My hands got good at bracing after a quarter of a century tumbling around on this planet. But I never seem to get much further than the middle toe. Maybe if I'd learned to bend in certain ways, the wind would have a harder time carrying me.

I'm going tonight, but I ain't gone yet.

You know what I like? I like it when people hold your nostrils open for you, but don't show you how to breathe. I'm sorry. My eyes get all foggy when I try to watch. I cry more than is good for me. I whimper, and wish I were much stronger than willow reed.

I'm only just here. Listening to the chair that you left squeal.

Earlier, I made people squeaky. Sometimes, people agree to talk really really fast if you promise to care for them. I didn't, but they got squeaky anyway. Serves me right. I've been meaning to come around for a while, but my ankles been swelling from the heat. When I'm unsure of myself, I just steal somebody else's voice, and talk all cocky and proud for a while. That's why I like them, really, the voices. Seeing in which ways people will be themselves with me. It was an interesting night. I listened to the voice of somebody I'd known a long time for the first time, and made up my mind.

He didn't have an accent, despite the name, but had a huge face, and a big mouth for words to spill out of. Helped me when I needed helping, and I said thank you, and he said I do. Have an accent. I never realized. I never heard the voice coming out from inside my own mouth. But then I thought about it, and realized I've never had this exact pitch voice before. That until now, it's all been wandering.

Remember her. She is forgetting.

I used to think someone would write that on my grave someday, but lately, I'm getting the impression it will be much sooner. Sometimes, I go into the next room, and forget. Often. Often enough for it to be frightening when people shrug it off and say but sure, don't that happen to everybody. I'm not sure this often. Or maybe I'm just not sure.

One version of the truth is, I am trying.

Another, that things have started getting away from me, and there's not much helping it, I'm afraid.

I wish you knew how hard I'm trying, though lately, I don't think I've been showing it much. I frighten myself in that I know if I were weaker, things could be easier. You'd know when to panic, but then I don't tell you, and expect you to know.

I grazed a nipple yesternight, and just sat for a while. Just in bed. Just marveling at the way blood goes. See, I know myself well enough to see that I will never let myself go.

To know this, this falling, this grazing, this immeasurable forgetting are all examples of quiet defiance.

I am living through a rebellion. My own. The last one I'll ever root for. Old, bald-pated sentinel that I am, I've lived behind the walls too long, but still I watch the waves at low-tide, and pray for a breeze.

The earth which filled her mouth
Is vanishing from her.
Remember me,
I have forgotten you.
I am going into the darkness of the darkness for ever,
I have forgotten that I was ever born.