pillar

jutting between my ribs

i feel you, pillar.

a phallic monument lodged between

two lungs and my heart

and my heart

i feel you piercing my heart.

i can feel your presence in an empty museum

after dark with locks and a lack of lights.

your shadow looming over me.

i know you loom over us all, pillar.

you loom inside us all.

i wish i knew your face, is it regal and white

and are you perfectly smooth.

or are you black and twisting like a cancer

through my veins. (all blood in your body is black. there is no light).

but you know this, pillar.

i want to turn face and stare into your massiveness.

i want to run my hands across your lengths

and press my ear to your cool surface.

i want to tell the world what you are, pillar, and lift the shroud.

i want to flood the halls of your museum, i want to shine a flashlight

into my veins and see what color my blood is.

because, pillar, i feel you every day. and i need to escape you.

or to at least objectify you.

maybe you are god and you've been placed there by a careful hand.

"Do you send back a signal to outer space?"

of course you are silent, pillar.

is it wisdom or bitterness? please answer me.

please.

are you an esoteric observation, pillar?

"It may be the bending of tall grass in a field in August.

It may be the stagnant harsh glow of lamplight.

I'm sorry my hands aren't perfect."

can you be captured in a phrase?

in a poem?

in a motion across pages?

why won't you let me in?

i've put my fingers into dirt and into other writers

and i haven't felt you there.

where are you?

once i felt you above me as i lied in bed with my arms

outstretched towards you.

i felt your gravity then and i knew i could expose you.

once i felt you when i lied in bed with my arms

outstretched towards a lover.

"I love you."

Do you love me, pillar? Do you love us all?

are you a forgotten memory, pillar?

do you block all my thoughts in hopes of hiding your true self?

"I don't remember, but it feels familiar.

Like cigarette smoke on her jeans or a story your grandfather told.

Like the rules to a card game."

i felt you when i split my hand open on a broken bottle

when i was a toddler and surrounded by the haze

that was maybe a dream.