I remember as a child being overwhelmed by how many details the world had to offer.
Walking to the tree swing in the front yard, bare feet over tree roots,
Rocks and worms toughening and tickling my soles, ants running through
My toes and around my ankles, the smells and tastes of dandelions and wild onions,
My hand over the variations of texture on the tree and rope my father had hung.
A few steps off the rough brick and I was a giant in a bright and visceral world.
I realize now, though, how little attention I pay to what’s below my feet.
And loss of detail and loss of a perception of something grander have gone hand in hand.
My senses are no longer so engaged;
Instead I feel the need to capture these moments,
To store them away.
I take them in my cupped hand and watch a bubble form around them.
They float away into an endless chamber, where I peer at them from a distance.
They move around slowly and serenely, these quiet moments of my disengaged life.
This dark space is too deep for me to comprehend, so I keep pouring in
Anew these moments I want to keep; these echoes of my life; these reflections
Of my sight and feeling.
Slowly I have constructed this mine of memories to live in with myself.
A large and indistinct world created and controlled, by me.
Together, these moments hold up a mirror of my desired me;
The only light reflected;
Tiny facsimiles of my senses echoing through the dark, merging into one imagined picture.
I throne myself here, and I have forgotten to look for something grander.
How can I orient myself in this dark space? With nothing to reference but the vast
Emptiness and my own translucent floating memories? To what is my identity tangibly tied?
In this strange landscape there is no clear direction or purpose other than those I create.
These roaming echoes of my reality resound off the solid boundaries of this world.
What is solid in this darkness that I cannot see?
The sounds teach me the depth of my created world by the length of their resounding.
The farther they echo, the fainter a version of themselves they become;
The farther I step in, the fainter a version of myself I become.

So that the me that you perceive is an assembly,
A collection of ideal moments curated in the dark.