April 3: On Reading Fiction

Going back to reading
feels like submerging myself in the sea
after years of a desert life.

Every sense is on edge;
I had forgotten
I could feel so much at once
from the narrow confines of my skin.

Here is where I find myself:
awake in somebody else's story.
The countries of my body
in a hundred places at once.
The scents of streets I cannot name.
The sounds of cities I have not seen.

Fiction is the kind of truth
or the kind of contradiction
you can feel in your flesh
instead of in your mind;
or in your mind instead of
in somebody else's words.
Fiction owns none of the
disharmonies of theory.

Here is where I find myself:
remembering a child who touched books
with the hands of a lover, kept words in a little mouth
like prayers, and held onto stories until they became
whispers, or dreams, or forgotten histories.

Here is where I find myself:
realizing that nothing really changes
even when nothing is the same.
Realizing my joy or my sorrow
or my skin stretched tight across
this cage of bleached bones
is not my own.
Only borrowed.