88: Soul

I take for granted this alien thing I don’t own and can’t expose except as it shows through earthly habits— speaking, acting as though it existed and were sacred; yet, stupidly, I betray it— I defile it— I am lonely, angry, impatient, in pain— not thinking—not knowing this charge put upon me without the power to uphold it. I stand in the men’s room at the mirror and look at my face whose color I cannot name, and never think “Here I have the evidence.” I walk home in the evening where along the sidewalks black trunks and black trees sweep slowly into gray clouds lit up by the city. I have friends whom I miss, but this doesn’t grant me special privilege. The rest is a metaphor as strange as others’ thoughts.