When I'm Not Here

I look around this room
and wonder about
the strange business
of being here.

The paintings on the wall.
Vivaldi playing in the background.
The puka shell necklaces
I made with my own hands.
The calendar with its little squares
waiting to be filled.
Appointments made.
Appointments missed.
The cat sitting there
like she owns the place.
My to-do list,
getting longer by the day.
A fly buzzing around my head
like it has somewhere
important to be.

My coffee cup.
The damn nicotine lozenges
I can't seem to put down.
All this ordinary shit
that makes up a life.

And someday
I'll look at none of it.

The auburn leaves will still blow
across the sidewalk,
gathering in the gutters
and dotting the grass in the yard
like a Monet landscape.
Somebody will carry a cup of coffee
through the morning.
A fly will find another head
to bother.
The cat will sit in the sunlight
and wonder when dinner is coming.

The world won't stop
to notice my absence.
The calendar will keep turning.
The coffee will get cold.
The little things
will go on being little things.
And somewhere,
Vivaldi will be playing
for somebody else.

And I'll be in a different place,
or maybe just sleeping.
Whatever it is
that makes me me,
that keeps this old machinery
running behind my eyes,
will be beyond my reach
or gone altogether.

It's a hell of a thing
to imagine the world
going on without you,
and an even stranger thing
to imagine yourself
no longer there to feel it.

But the room will live on
for a while
without the one
who used to live in it.