Payton Selby

At times— I am aware of this  bizarre humanity we all face  We can’t cherry pick  memories, can we? 

We can’t lacquer life in gold  and beckon it to  stay?

I am suddenly aware, too Nothing & Everything  are so small and insignificant 

If that makes sense. 

You see, There’s a boy  I won’t let myself take seriously, And I yelled at my mom this morning  And I didn’t get the job I wanted

I often say things I can’t take back— I love you— When I don’t mean it.  I hate you— When I don’t mean it. I set boundaries— I lift them.  I swim oceans— I simultaneously sink. 

Humanity is darkness and ever expanding light.  On this matter I will choose to forget  Black       holes. 

Pretend, momentarily  in the scale of this universe, darkness does not, in fact, prevail over light.

Then— either this is nothing  and we can linger in the comfort of this nihilism 

Or—it is everything emblematic of something  absorbed by something else. If this is, in fact, meaningless: 

Then this job—any job, is no big deal  I can rid myself of fate and detangle myself from destiny. 

And if this is nothing—then this boy is just a boy  I can choose to love , or to leave. 

And if this is nothing—then love comes when we let it.

Just a reaction to time, touch and translation.

And I yelled at my mom this morning—  and if this is nothing then words dissolve in air and time. And mothers need daughters just in the way I need her too, and she knows that  because, in this world it doesn’t need to be said.

All of this— if this is nothing. 

Then there is the problem, that if this moment is everything:

Then I fear I may not forget him, then maybe we found rarity  in sparkle blue rooftops and in blank space where time ceases its continuum.

If these things so small may add up to everything, maybe we don’t forget being held.

Perhaps his gaze can incarnate Make Meaningless Matter  of that, which is not my own.

If he is everything- which is almost always  in this case equal to nothing

he’ll be manic  & I the pixelated dream girl: a cursed frame in fairy dust.

Maybe I lend myself to wicked fate yes, “fate” all over again!

If this is everything- then leave me with nothing. 

Take destiny –if this job isn’t mine it wasn’t meant for me. Maybe something else is, then I garner the courage  to spot and seize and make no one proud. 

But then again if this is everything; then my mom may not forget those words I said.  And then again I might not either. And then again, maybe I meant them.

I’m desperate to cherry pick  Sporadically employ faith over reason and reason over faith and circle back again.

In what school of thought do we place our classroom? Ask a scientist? Ask a friend?  Ask a therapist? Ask a poet?  Family? myself? Ask my soul which inhabits myself? Ask a monk, ask god? Ask the third eye? 

Shall I stare down the ink soaked night on the precipice of  The Black Hole  On the precipice of nothing  & also everything. And beg: “OPEN SESAME!”