Four years ago I was somebody. I made a lot of words in those days. I was a word maker. Talking talking talking talking. Writing writing writing writing writing. Talking and writing. In my defense, there were people who wanted to hear me. There was even a group of people who paid me to talk to them every Sunday morning. It was a straight-up gig. On the level. I made words for people.
So many words. So very many words.
So I was at the talking place one Sunday morning, doing my talking thing, when I began to feel that I had said enough. My mouth slowly closed until it was small and round, like the mouths of the kids singing at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas. And then my lips came together and no more words wanted to come out.
I could not make those kinds of words anymore. So I backed away from the microphone. I kept backing up until I had backed all the way out of the room and into the parking lot. I backed into my car, drove it backwards all the way home, and backed into a dark closet. I wrapped myself in a thick blanket of nobody, and I haven’t come out since.
nobody’s priest
nobody’s fool
nobody’s hero
nobody’s tool
nobody’s icon
nobody’s note
nobody’s scape
nobody’s goat
nobody’s mouthpiece
nobody’s boy
nobody’s furniture
nobody’s toy
nobody to fix
nobody to heal
nobody to care for
nobody to feel
nobody needs me
nobody sees me
nobody hears me
nobody feeds me
I am nobody. I am not a body.
These days I wander around looking at the world in new ways. And I’m watching all the busy and important bodies walking fast and talking even faster. I don’t know where they are going. I don’t know why they are in such a hurry. And I don’t know what they are saying. It’s probably the same stuff I used to say, but I’m not sure because their words don’t make sense to me. I cannot make sense. Of their words.
I seem to not know things now. I am not able to know the things that other people know.
I live in a state of unknowing.
But I know I’m not alone. Now that I’m off the main road and not moving so fast, I see footprints meandering here and there and trailing off into the woods. I feel the presence of someone else. Another nobody.
Good.
There’s a pair of us.
