Is It Like Being Lost
because I know what that’s like.
When it’s late,
and I walk the wrong way down the wrong street again.
When I lay it down,
give it up, there and nowhere and here and disappear,
where will I be?
I go looking for you, but I need a mind
not like mine,
with its severe lack of cognitive maps, perception, directions.
I should be taken out
back, buried under street signs, way under the framework of the
familiar yet unfamiliar
grid. When you don’t know where you are, you lose your body.
Three-dimensional patterns
appear flattened, the universe’s rules upended. Upside down,
trying to go back
the way I came, but always in the wrong direction.
People’s ideas about how to fix the problem
don’t address what to do
with the bits and pieces, frayed fragments, of my brain’s scattered
debris. So little ability
to balance, calibrate distance, that one day I’ll slide off the wrong side
of the familiar yet unfamiliar
grid, on the wrong block, on the wrong street, in the wrong home.
And then I won’t live
anywhere anymore.
You always knew where you were,
where you were going,
but I still tell people you are lost as explanation. Did you know it
instantly? I know the way
you can suddenly know you are not in the right place. Until now,
you haven’t known
what it’s like to be counted among the missing, that other people’s ideas
about how to fix the problem
leave you abandoned, stranded, in the wrong spaces, calling in from
remote places,
where search parties can’t locate any signs of life or be seen.
More often than not,
it’s late, and I am still somewhere,
but I can’t see what’s ahead of me. When you don’t know
where you are,
you lose your body. How will I let go, like you, transition from
tethered to untethered
on this familiar yet unfamiliar grid. When I walk the wrong way
down the wrong street,
lay it down there and nowhere and here and disappear.
When I give it up, where will I be?
….
This poem is from the chapbook At The End of My Bones by Naomi Leimsider (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/at-the-end-of-my-bones-by-naomi-leimsider/
Naomi Bess Leimsider’s poetry book, Wild Evolution, was published in June 2023. In 2022, she received a Pushcart Prize nomination for fiction. She has published poems, flash fiction, and short stories in numerous journals, including Branches, Ellipsis, Heavy Feather Review, Mantis, Unleash Lit, Tangled Locks Journal, Booth, Syncopation Literary Journal, On the Seawall, Orca, Anti-Heroin Chic, Rogue Agent Journal, Quarterly West, Newtown Literary, and The Adirondack Review. In addition, she has been a finalist for the Acacia Fiction Prize and the Saguaro Poetry Prize. She teaches creative writing and expository writing at Hunter College/CUNY. @naomibessl @naomibessl.bsky.social
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