One Who Simply Is Not

How lightly do the rays of the morning sun fall

Blanketing every surface of this second story room

Between the shade slats and whichever leaves it could manage to evade

Illuminating the freshly scrubbed carpet

And a pile of books

A pile of books that does not yet exist

Yet they sit, piled high on the coffee table

I could reach out and touch them even reclined on the couch

But my grasp is not firm and my fingers are vaporous

And the scent of the books is like petrichor

Though, I cannot tell if the storm is coming

Or if it passed long ago

The books have been in a pile on the coffee table for so long

Occasionally, I wake in a sweat, and the twilight moon

Illuminates them, and I stare at them across the room

I’d walk over and grab them, but my legs grow heavy and weak

And as moonlight reveals special runes in fairytales

It touches my fingertips until you can see right through them

And I mourn their nonexistence

I don’t know how to give them life

How to make concrete something that may not truly be

I don’t dare press my full body into the moonlight

For fear that I, too, will be discovered

As one with nothing

Or one who simply is not