Prayer for One Thing

So far, all my life I have been hungry for addition. I eat my way through books, sunsets, mountains, lonely women and still my wrists are thin as wires, my chest is mostly bone. We are what we notice, I once wrote, adding: so I try to notice everything.

So far, I have noticed:

homeless runaways, families imploding, teenaged sex offenders, fathers exploding, mothers in love, hungry people, lonely people, people who move like men on fire, people who sleep like stones, the limitation of skin and a half-dozen ways around it, how to kiss wholly; how to be present; how to disappear; and how to recognize the difference.

Impossible to list them all; besi des, what would be the point? The world lets them live beyond lists, which is what I am trying to get at. So far, all my life I have been hungry for more. Today, let there be just one thing, and let that be enough. A light in the window across the street goes out. Up above, the sky is swimming in an invisible ocean of stars. As I write these words into the page, I notice my hands, and so I decide to type:


lonely lonely who is lonely? everyone's fingers look like mine--


-amr-