By Jacob Murray
Your life is a gallery of blank canvases
collated, situated upon the wall
perceptible to all.
Its patrons converse and consume idly, inertly
sipping champagne and sharing scholia.
Words of hollow admiration twirling
in tinny coaxial ribbons.
You watch them as they watch
you. You hear, but do not
listen. You feel their presence
but not as you feel a cut or a
bruise.
Muted, as if occupying neighbouring
moments. Connection insufficiently
ethereal for its ephemerality.
Glasses clink and forced laughter
scrapes.
You are inside and out.
Observed but not seen.
You face the false, expectant smiles and
the man-shaped smudges upon which they sit.
What to do.
Smile back? Perpetuate the very artifice
holding you at arm’s length from experience?
Don’t? Pull away as they push?
You hesitate. And
your blood coagulates.
And your soul attenuates.
And you hesitate.
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