No matter where I turn

I come up against it.

No matter how far away I am when I see it,

I come up against it.

I can put my hands out or cover my eyes but it makes no difference when

I come up against it.

 

No, it's not dying.

That's easy to ignore:

 dying ignores me.

When I reach out to touch that

my hands go through.

 

Like the ghost of Odysseus's mother,

eyes unseeing, mouth speaking gibberish.

That

belongs to someone else.

 

When I reach to

embrace it my hands go through until I embrace

only myself.

 

And again

I come up against it.

 

The outside where I end

and everything else begins, where I end

and me begins is where

I come up against it.