It's that moment when you've walked ten minutes
from your house without seeing anyone alive,
the stoplights glittering like decorations
in the early morning light, and you start to think:
There has been a pandemic in the night,
everyone in the world is dead and I somehow survived
but then a car drifts by and you think:
"My God! The only other person left. I wonder if they know yet."
That's the moment that makes you realize
that morality is just a word that means,
"Everything that is done is better if its done
my way."
It's that feeling that everyone knows around noon
walking in a mostly empty park you become
unshakably convinced that someone is watching
you, and that the sky is a giant bluebird's face
with an eye that shines light into everything.
That's the feeling that makes you realize
that mortality is just a word that means,
"Deep down, we are all exactly the same.
Hooray."
It's that decision in the evening that you must
find the meaning of everything before going to bed;
then after looking in some obvious books you look
under the couch, you stretch and reach deep down there
and realize that the strange twitching surface
at the tip of your finger is really the very sole
of your own shoe.
That's the decision that makes you realize
that you is just a word that is spelled
nothing like how it sounds.
