Mattering
ZOE WEISS
I think I’ve forgotten how to write.
Poised above a keyboard
reaching for just one of a dozen thoughts
to capture even a single frame
each darting by –
gray and intangible,
as if my focus could not
—hold—
So here I am, armed with a third cup of coffee,
a pile of half opened deliberations
creased into bookmarks,
tucked into a wide white pocket
writing about how I cannot write anymore.
My fingers— charmed into self-assurance
Tracing intersecting stains into perfect rings
As if to reassure the wood
It’s not that I used to have such profound thoughts
and suddenly have deadened.
On the contrary
they were more-often-than-not
tritely existential,
too proudly compassionate
written with the candor of a young scholar
balancing cynicism, optimism, and reason,
Animated
by the notion
that I may consider
what does or doesn't matter,
about the meaning of mattering,
and the mattering of mattering.
Until I have been immersed in mattering,
By a role most inconsequential.
Un-pretty-un-poetic- awkward-flustering-nearly-always-lost
Watching the rise and fall of a rounded baby belly, shaken into cerebral oblivion,
jarred by the shrill of the monitor remembering
Awed by toddlers whose bones break and bend and bruise
Begging for a sticky purple popsicle
Who become children
chasing cars into streets, tumbling out of trees;
To teenagers whose dark eyes cast nooses as they roll,
Into young mothers, hair pulled tight,
Too thin or too thick, painted with worry,
lipstick, and cigarette smoke,
A sleeping number to the hip, another tugging, screaming at her shirt,
Dulled by paint chips, cockroaches
coughing on air heavy with smoke and smog and violence.
I think those are things that matter.
But here I am, wordless, paging through manuals
Dense with impressive language, surely
I should find a formula,
Highly regarded, double blinded, multiphasic, systematic
Explaining this hierarchy of mattering
Fashioned from rules spun by egos, debt and deprivation,
Transiently occupied by people named “the ruptured spleen” and the “epidural in room two.”
Here is where I begin forgetting.