Night Meditation

by Reiko Davis

The white lights pierce tiny orbs of dark
A sound like a deep exhalation of human breath
seeps through metal screens

Ah! Powerful jets are ascending in waves of mist

The cold remains of mint tea
The open, unfinished passages
The inscrutable notes

Then it strikes me ---

Will I ever be this lucid, this passionate again?

I feel the anxiety encroaching like an unholy beast on youthful wonder.

When will my skin stretch so taut over cheekbones –
When will I exist so singularly for the romance, the creative genius,

The unprobed recesses of consciousness?

I have never felt so hopeful
And defeated
So insightful and insipid
Beautiful and degenerate
As in this enveloping silence
That breathes coolly on bare feet and cheeks.

Here I sit tormented atop the summit of fate

I perceive imminent descent or apotheosis

Nothing between.

To stop it would require a suicide of the organic mind and spirit.

Now I wait as an insomniac for relief…

I cannot suffer these existential crises during hours somnambulant.
And I beg for this desolation to subside.

But how else would I know what it is to be alive?