dislocation

poetry corner

Occasionally, I feel like I exist
outside of time.

Outside of order and rules and normalcy.
I wake up and I’m eighty-five.
Or at least my mind is.

Sharp.
But not of today.

Like I have survived something
no one remembers
happening.

I move through mornings with the strange
certainty
of a woman who has already buried everyone she loves,
who has learned how to sit quietly in empty rooms,
who understands, finally,
that most things do not
resolve.

Some days I feel archaic in the least dignified way —
not wise,
just untethered.

Like I missed an instruction everyone else received.

People speak to me,
I answer a second too late,
as though my spirit has to travel a great distance
to reach the moment.

Even my happiness feels ancient.

Pressed flowers in heavy books.
Dust in sunlit curtains.
A song playing faintly from another apartment.

And still —
I make coffee.
I feed the dog.
I answer emails.

Tiny modern rituals
performed by a woman
already halfway into memory.

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