A pooling darkness, a small pebble

Reincarnation

So we go along for some years and a few
more after that and sometimes the shade
begins to drop down and the light in the room
dims and dims some more as shapes take on
others while others lose cohesion to recombine
with a pooling darkness, and a small pebble
forms in the shoe of your soul and grides and
rubs raw until it pokes through to tear leather
built up over years of careful cobbling, some
tender, some knurled in anger, and the dimming,
the dimming continues as your feet hurt and the
room goes dark and no one can see in and you
can’t see out because the shade has welded shut
and the cord has slipped the ring and nothing will
raise it again, not Jesus, not Dos Equis, not Slap
Chop, so you sit with it until you can’t sit with it
any longer and no one cares that can change it
because there’s a certain comfort seasoned in all
of this, the cussing, the short patience, the contempt
for how things ever got to this state of brokenness,
and life keeps pressing the buzzer and kicking at
the door and you’d give it all if it would just go
away and suddenly the shade coils up, snaps
open, and the whole thing starts all over again.

Joseph Gallo
August 7, 2010