50. Things I Can Flip: The Switch

He says, me too.
When it’s bad, I think
if I could see the switch
that ends
everything
I’d be tempted
except it is too far
to reach,
even just there
across the room.

Thank god volition
is a casualty
of depression.

I say
When it’s bad, I think
if I could see the switch
that lifts me
up,
I’d ignore it.

In fact, I do.
Every day.
Every time.

Right now.

And suddenly I know it
the way a lost song
pours across the tongue,
this wave a fluorescence entirely
untwinned from the flickering bulbs
that share its name:
Light. It urges
shadow from corner
and washes it into a chiaroscuro
of truss and beam
which takes the weight
I carry. A simple trade:
one stone
for each step.

The switch is an utter failure
at playing hide-and-seek.
I close my eyes and count
to 20 and it says
I’m right here
So I press my hands into my face
and count past a hundred and it says
Still here
so I thread the blindfold
from eardrum to throat
and knot it twice
inside my skull
then begin to number
each tomb and each bone

and still it lays itself
across my feet and says
Here.

Right here.

It is inches
or less from my skin
no matter how I pivot, it stays.
It only asks I feel
for sash, pane
keys, chord
gust, leaf. Asks I open
voice,
thicket,
hasp,
wing.

The switch is a loaded spring
plugged everywhere
to everything.

When it’s bad,
a gesture
as tiny as a twitch
can make it good.

I guess I’m getting up,
I say. I’m ready to move.

He says
Me too.