A magic pill that brings forth wakefulness instantaneously
to my sleeping hippocampus sedated by the lull
of every ticking time bombs: dead-lines
where the living humans lie—
this word is my panacea
that an unseen spirit injects often without consent
like emergency aid before all is too late
and there is no one in the room
but the patient and the medicine
This string of letters alone brings to me
the most comforting of all hallucinations:
An almost-empty cinema
a buzzing train of a city in the evening
even that corner coffee shop in a perpetual rain;
riveted am I to thoughts from some-time-since
when somehow no line mattered, there were no boundaries
only starry-eyed souls on a mountaintop
Even instant coffee then felt otherworldly
how much more every new poem written and received
even the snapshots taken by my entry-level glasses
through which I saw beyond the temporality of routines
I would wake up at the same time as is now
and I can no longer see the stars
that lined the cotton-candy skies of a turbulent youth’s moon
The first time I encountered this word, I cried
now, I no longer feel as sad as I once would
right now, I no longer feel as much at all