Vichyssoise Lightning Bugs

Photo by Em'me

What I don’t know is vast, the information an endless breath rolling over the frontal cortex of my brain, allowing me to assume nothing—I am not what I appear and also without fact. This condition makes who I am anomalous. Giving me a name counterintuitive and pixie-like, as it continually changes, the reflection making me impossible to define.

In some cases, this condition could make the carrier frenetic, unhinged, despondent, and so mercurial as to make them unmanageable. I am occasionally of that condition, my woe of it almost a death wish, asking but not imbibing in the pleasure of an ending. It would indeed be a pleasure, in so far as it would lay bare the unbearable state of my un-being. Isn’t that what it is? This non-definition of self? The continual unveiling of another aspect left in the sink as a shred that's come undone from the main course. 

It is me, the many-minded, who carries essences of whatever was never. It is me that walks with ghosts of those who could not be. It is me. It is me. It is me. We are not allowed the vichyssoise of self—pureed into sublime perfection, instead separate essences—not a whole potato or leeks, only the perfume left behind after they have been chopped to bits.

This mercurial state is of importance and also not. Interchangeable lightness with a state of darkness, as each of me is both. Wisps of delectable golden flecks—a lightning bug as it glimmers in a wood too-too far from touch that is transfixed with a blackness so inky no octopus would own the trail. As such, the length of my appendages, each coiled or flying too far, reach toward and against a life that is less than it could ever have been. The whole of us, unmanaged and left behind is soggy, limp, and without focus, even as a few tendrils strive for the sky.

Here we are. Here we rest. Here we wait. Wondering. Wondering if there is a way back to me and if the trail will be as vast as we are, glitter-filled lightening bugs, their own vichyssoise perfume waving them yonder, with an end that is impossible to see.