by Joe Nicholas

I came to on the left step, a jagged greeting of sole
and hard stone, and saw that I had lost myself
for two blocks, a skeleton of veins
walking aimless beneath the current,
a husk of thought,

and I realized I had felt nothing,
no anger or grief, no wonder,
no bliss, only the void of droning
contemplation, a spinning web
of starlight and sparks. I saw that emotion
had left thought before, but never
the other way around, and the finger cannot be without the hand,

and I am only a palm
pressing the dark, the seedling that grows
into trees, the 1s and 0s,
and endless between, and I was struck
that to become what we will be,
we must forget who we are, and that scared me,

and that scares me,
and that seats me in awe.

I came to on the left step, a jagged greeting of sole
and hard stone, and saw that I had been wholly myself
for two blocks, forgetting my bones and blood,
remembering I am only the river that runs them, the headwaters draining
straight into the mouth.


Joe Nicholas is an experimenter and experiencer with work to be found in BOAAT, The Legendary, Profane, Willard & Maple, and other fine magazines. He enjoys wine, felines, puns, perpetual evolution, and all things bizarre. His blogfolio can be found at 8rainCh1ld.tk.