Calculations
        No matter what you start out with
        you always end up with so much less.
        —The Hours

Myself—
the abridged, the novel that never was, sub-
tracted, abbreviated, a subtitle of self.
            So soon to be
the slightest signal of a women, draped in my tattered flag,
holding a box of zeroes
            and a mouthful of air.
When the end comes it won't matter.
            In between
I will have thought myself large, whole, my travels far,
experiences grand, many stories to tell and so on ....
But what emancipation—
            to be diminished, reduced
to the absolute; a room deprived
of its contents, melting ice
at the bottom of someone's glass,
the tipped bottle and its residual remains.
            What delicious deliverance,
what radiant resignation
to be so much
less than I
could have ever hoped for.

Tweet

Copyright © 2019 Tina Schumann All rights reserved
from Praising the Paradox
Red Hen Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission