We all feel it coming
4/10/2022, Con/Jur/d

The approach
is always with us,
like my best friend
would ask, as at the 
time we shared one
mind, it was easy,
as easy as finding
him in the stacks
of 5 libraries
the 1 of
of the 6 stories
among 1000s
of students
and 1,000,000s
of books
countless
ideas

(some of which were actually good)

sitting on the carpeted beige
floor, knowing him, reading
a physics magazine,
after a beeline
whose orientation seen 
from above:

Left
Left,
Right
Up,
Left
Right
Up
Up
Open door
Listen

a familiar pattern of breathing,
“Time to go home,” I said
and later, after the incident
not the one we all feel 
is coming, an end
none the less

He said, “Why does it always
have to be death with you?”
and sharing one mind
the tap, tap
of a hacky sack
the windy whoosh, whoosh
of juggling pins, substituting
for the overly complicated
electrochemical neuronal
CNS signal system

I replied “When this 
is gone and we 
inhabit different 
bodies pretending 
for the sake
of navigation 
we have separate minds 
and after all these years
all this coming and going
this living and dying
when we can’t remember
breakfast and have
skipped lunch
how else would this
remain?”