Perhaps the greatest mystery, the final solution, will turn out to be the person.

What a shame that would be considering I’ve spent my entire life

Looking around the edges and over the tops of people,

Trying to see through them and their calculations,

Dismantling them, suggesting their lack of substance,

Only relating to them on a needs-must basis,

When they and their demands become too pressing to ignore.

Perhaps it was only the person.

Just a little kindness and attention to the consistently present other.

A child’s truth.

“Yes, I see you.  Yes, you’re real.  As real as I am.”

Yes, perhaps it will yet be the person,

Someday, maybe my last day, when I’ll let the other,

Be my answer,

My lifeline.

I’m not saying there isn’t anything wrong.

I’m just saying that there is nothing Wrong.

I watched as he fell from his waking shelf

Into familiar waters that filled a room of lowering light and liquid song.

Waiting for his breath to turn, his self to turn, one last sigh and off the ledge he dropped,

To meet me where we always met to talk.

To talk not the talk of words but straight from his rising and falling chest from which

His second voice, a voice I knew less well though had known for longer

Sighed breath-words that carried secrets from another place.

“But I have so many worries,” I whispered, “uncountable worries, enough to fill the whole of space.”

And he sighed on beneath the birdsong,

“So you might, so you might.” I heard.

“Hang them on tress, kite tails in the breeze.”