Thank you.
The title of this is The Poem.
Would you like me more if I were a woman?
Would you treat me better were I a man?
I'm just words.
No, not words even.
Just marks on a page.
Tokens of what?
Oh, you know.
Then tell them, will you?
Tell them to stop looking for me.
Tell them I never left home.
Tell them if you must, that I never left my body.
Unlike so many others, I had no wings, just shoulders.
I was like the snow bunting of stout build but moderate size.
Better make that exceedingly moderate size.
I'm neither blessed nor cursed.
But that the good suffered and evil
closed the books in triumph.
I cured no one.
When I died, my bones turned to dust, not diamonds.
At best, a tooth or two became coal.
How long it took.
You would have liked me then, had you been alive still.
Had you survived the silliness of the self,
you would have treated me better.
I never lied to you once I had grown up.
When X told you were wonderful, I said only that you existed.
When y said that you were awful, I
said only that life continues.
I did not mean a life like yours.
Not life, so proud to be life.
Not life, so conscious of life.
Not life, reduced to this life or that life.
Not life, as something to see or own.
Not life, as a form of life, which
wants wings it doesn't have and a skeleton of jewels,
not this one of bones and becoming.
How perfect are my words now in your absence.
Ungainly, yet mild perhaps, taking the place of no field,
offering neither to stand in the place of a tree
nor where the water was.
Neither under your heel nor floating.
Just gradually appearing, gainless and insubstantial,
near you as always, asking you to dance.