There’s No Such Thing As Blue Water

 

I’ve been thinking that montage is a mental technique

for accepting unity as a convulsive illusion. I feel sick.

I hate it when my stories have holes, though I suspect

there’s where the truth leaks out. So go back to bed.

Maybe it’s laziness, maybe the delivery system is flawed.

If life is a movie, then I’ve spent years sneaking out

for smoke breaks between takes. I do violence to myself.

I imagine the ones I love dead in their favourite chairs,

dead in distant car crashes. Who are those girls who wear

lipstick to watch TV? The women I know go shut-in,

sleep in their clothes for days in a row. A self-help author

revealed to me with great confidence that life is swinging

from branch to branch in a fog. And I thought of course

he’s right, of course, he’s wrong. Let’s say we are always

at Point A. From space, the ocean is only a mirror.