a pathetic fallacy,
I hear him explain,
while I also hear the crackle from the iridescent bubbles on top of my coffee, freshly-brewed on our old stove,
and see the steam rising light and airy from my cup, which
overflows on mornings like this one –
Sunday, overnight oats in a mason jar and fresh strawberries from the market, and I just finished reading a sharp-tongued, purple-clothed book before listening to a podcast on poetry;
words,
swords,
whetted words,
god knows I’ve neglected them for a while
(good news, not anymore),
I feel like a jealous, jilted lover, almost,
who only realizes what he’s on the cusp of losing once the loss is already certain, though not yet arisen,
the thing about to be lost on the tips of his fingers, slipping slowly,
and in an ill-informed attempt to save what’s left on the palm of his hand, he crushes it to keep it from escaping –
I am saving my words, in all of its meanings,
and realize I am a pathetic fallacy myself
‘a pathetic fallacy’, the bodiless voice on the podcast explains, ‘is when a poem that is gloomy says it’s raining, or a joyful poem describes the brilliant sunshine’,
and Wikipedia tells me it is ‘the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human’
and I think about other sorts of pathetic fallacies,
the one of being human, for example,
it’s Sunday and I certainly could have done ten things better throughout the last seven days, could have been more of a success at times, less of a pathetic fallacy,
but then I also think that pathetic fallacies make sense within their own confines; beings that reflect truthfully their environment, that do not try to pretend to be different from what they are;
no desire
to mask up the rain with sun, a brave smile, sliver of teeth,
and then I think that pathetic fallacies are not so
pathetic
after all
and I circle back to myself, u-turn, full-on, head-on, look myself into the eye and lock myself into the (sometimes) impossible art of being, and
think that I like being a pathetic fallacy, wearing my heart on my sleeve, my feelings on the tip of my tongue, should aspire to do so more,
because I find that it’s the only way I can
save my words from escaping, or being crushed
in the palm of my hands or the centre of my heart.