What brings me to this floor

What brings me to this floor


It's funny being reduced.


It comes in an instant
and grasps a spot in me I keep trying to bury away.


I tried to cauterize the wound
to burn it with the extremes of grief and surrender myself to the howling emotion.
I let it
spiral me down
and infest in me so that it could fill me up
spill out
and I could start from empty.


But that hollow
it wanted full
and with no replacement
no equal
what else can it find but what it knows.


So in these moments I'm reduced.
Minimized and sacrificed to thought.
Over the strangest things.
Things I never would have gleamed a fear or sadness from suddenly overtake me
and their tiny
all be it
formidable acquaintance with my own experience moves me motionless on the floor.


Children's television shows
a name mentioned in passing
a meal once recalled
walking out an elevator
trapped on a balcony naked
seeing a pattern on a pillow
a sock left by accident
a puzzle half completed
a jar of pickles wasted
a bottle of hot sauce saved.


What each means is only a known guess
a secret kept in passing.
They are only moments etched forever
that grace and dance like moths.
May they not lose their momentum
and have them circle once again.


-Matthew Koutzun