haibun || Sheila E. Murphy

I think you ought to notice how I got here, if you must. The sole prerequisite I dare mention is

this homemade map you did not make. One that wrinkles the way the other wrinkles, not the 

sort of fresh new folds yours would have shown. I want you to relish how this map defines for 

you the first location that I did not know, the one replete with people who insisted they knew 

me. Acorns popped when low October flame occurred to them. I liked smoke when I 

walked and where I rode. That was how I found out various ways in which I never was myself.  The quality of entity most often happens as a fractional restraint. Like one of those games you are assigned to play to show that everyone's related to all others. Where you walk around with one flat piece of cardboard chopped, and make small talk with others in the faint event they might help. When you pretend you are enjoying what is impossible to like. With people you don't blame at all. So take that map and figure out where you are not. This is the way to start relinquishing the Heisenberg that would represent you if you really loved the theory. You see, I'm older than you look. I'm younger than I am. You're actually my child, and I was just born to your mother. Take my facts and place them in a blender. Find yourself a flute and duke it out with some policeman who will ticket you if my predictions for your future come to life. Which is to say, repair your expectations, because of all the self-hood in the house. Where rules will louse up how you frame your past. Until you know that you don't matter and don't mind, no matter how fast and how far, no matter what you think you might in 

retrospective future tense have started off to want.

All sentences that start with so, hand-holding even with air shadows, purportedly desiring

and with various imitations of emergency

Sheila E. Murphy