11-10-2019, 12:34 PM
Tantalus
It always begins this way:
I am standing ankle-deep in mud,
and Something is only a few steps away.
I don’t even know what It is, but it is bright
and it is warm and radiating wonder.
It is warm and I am cold and I Want it.
I am hungry for it, ravenous even.
But there is a catch.
To reach it I would have to move my feet,
these feet that are mired,
which have always been mired,
and I can’t. I just can’t. I don’t even know why.
It’s such a little bit of mud that holds me here,
but it is enough.
I feel the chill of Outside burrow deeper
so I wrap myself in a cocoon of daydreams
and pretend that I am running free
careening headlong into bliss.
It always begins this way:
I am standing ankle-deep in mud,
and Something is only a few steps away.
I don’t even know what It is, but it is bright
and it is warm and radiating wonder.
It is warm and I am cold and I Want it.
I am hungry for it, ravenous even.
But there is a catch.
To reach it I would have to move my feet,
these feet that are mired,
which have always been mired,
and I can’t. I just can’t. I don’t even know why.
It’s such a little bit of mud that holds me here,
but it is enough.
I feel the chill of Outside burrow deeper
so I wrap myself in a cocoon of daydreams
and pretend that I am running free
careening headlong into bliss.
The Soufflé isn’t the soufflé; the soufflé is the recipe. --Clara