Being on the Outside
It was easy in the end,
to get up and go out
into the garden
and feel the patched sunlight
shine and blink upon my face,
take in the crisp smell of damp
earth and leaf
left after the rain.
I could still be slumped
in that chair, inside, beset
by aches and pains.
A few taken steps has me
here, outside. The narrow circle
that held me in my own mind
has stretched to the far fence,
a strange, new world
has flooded in.
I can no longer tell
where my boundary is,
my limits don't seem defined
by skin. It's over there,
somewhere beyond the fern,
even more distant
than that branch
hoisting its leaves into the air.
Nor do I know
where my center is,
or the person at the core
that keeps me in orbit
around a name.
Rather I am five senses
wired to somewhere,
no more than what I take in.
It would be good
to remain here and not go back.
There's an appeal in the idea
of self dissolution, to be
a boundless no-one.
But there are those that I love
who are not here
in this gated, reclusive space
and who care for me in a world
where my aches and pains reside,
back inside and within
the circumference of who I am
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