by LJ Frank

All things have a story to tell –  the high mileage car that I drive, the post industrial buildings I work in, an oak tree that stands alone in the middle of a field or an evergreen in the woods with branches interlaced with others, or the aspen leaf quivering in a changing season, or a cultural bridge concocted in the recesses of the mind or a physical bridge that’s to be crossed over, or perhaps I exist underneath floating on a boat, knowing the universe doesn’t blink at whether or not my navigation is true or merely adrift; 

 And the story may be of a house that serves as a home if fortune allows, or I may discover the spiritual home is more authentic than the physical structure in which I dwell knowing the ultimate place in which I must live resides within my heart filled with its aches and pleasures; 

I may find myself in a seemingly parallel reality, based on a decision made at an earlier age, and then awaken in someone’s tale other than my own with an indiscernible plot amid characters that are out of sync with each other’s rhyme, but I stop to recognize that bewildered is better than lost;

 The hour and day ahead may vanish in the ticking of seconds with no rationale to exist, here rather than there, and my brain queries whether it matters, for I may encounter an affirmation of existence only to find it appears and disappears with the incoming tide that washes over my mud-prints between the shore’s ancient boulders and leave no tracing behind, expectations within the context of the cosmos is yet to be understood;

 And there is in the millisecond of artificial time the moment I ejaculate words with letters spilling on the ground and where my perception ends and another begins as the semen of my thoughts dissipate in the sand, I catch my breath, and then there are the minutes my narrative feels surreal as I find myself somewhere between what is and what might have been while walking toward the horizon to watch fading showers of sunlight spreading across an evening blue sky and the yellow orb veiled…I sigh and ask in quiet, what if?