Micah Ling
Alone
I heard on the radio scientists think
there’s a 53% chance we’re entirely alone.
Enough to make you turn alone
around in your mouth so many times
it becomes something foreign, like a marble.
But, this also means scientists (real people
who study this sort of thing) are 47% sure
we’re not alone. I have a snapshot of myself
just a shadow with outrageous limbs
in the late evening sun. I look at it
when I wish I was not alone.
Managua
Tourists in Nicaragua, we don’t know
much. Thinking we’ll find chocolate
and cigars, we crooked-walk
the sidewalk busted from a quake
forty years ago, never fixed.
Giant doors hide flaws of a land
mined dry. Inside, a courtyard pool,
rope hammocks, pulpy juice.
A small brown child big-eyed
blinks. We live on tostones now
and wonder how much of anything
we really need.
My Name Is Blank
The first time you wish your mother was dead
is bleak, for sure. But after dozens of wishes
you reduce yourself to something other-than.
A film, an egg white. Barely more than nothing.
Such little substance, you live in that place of guilt,
the knowledge that you must smell.
*
An object at rest will stay at rest unless
acted upon by an unbalanced force. But
more importantly, a person in motion will stay
in motion, in motion, in motion, they will
go through the motions over and over, they will
not stop. Stopping is the thing to do.
*
Stopping is the thing not done. When she creeps
into your dreams. Not a dream here and there, but
each dream. When each non-waking hour is hers
then you know you’ve done something, or not
done the right thing. Do the right thing. All
there is to do is stop. Full stop. When
*
the position of the body with respect
to surroundings does not change, it is
at rest. The easiest thing for the body to do
is not move. Motion is a change in position
over time. It is observed by attaching a frame
of reference. Today you woke at noon.
*
The simplest action is no action, no motion,
to remain at rest. When work is done, energy
is transferred from one place to another. It takes power
to get your bottles. Electricity. Triggers firing.
Work done divided by time taken. Years divided
by years. Power lifts you to chaos. Chaos theory
*
proves underlying patterns within randomness.
Chaotic behavior exists in natural systems, such as
weather, and childhood tragedy.
On Visiting Père-Lachaise and Not Seeing Jim Morrison's Grave
You forget, when living somewhere else,
that city life is constant
climbing. On the train, hours
to get home, I calculated
how many stairs it took to be safe
and dry and fed. But here
in Paris, in springtime, always just after
a rain, walking miles of cobble,
I don’t mind the 62-stairs to our flat
or missing what the book says is must-see.
There’s a freedom in being lost
and without language, like a tree
entirely unconcerned with how to
and focused only on growing, slowly.
Sometimes growing alone
for 5,000 years, so much change
so much there, and then gone.
And at 184-years, a Seychelles giant tortoise
named Jonathan is the oldest living animal.
The people of the island have combined
French and English and African dialects
into Seychellois Creole. But there are rules
an adaptation of things that make sense.
The article is part of the word,
which means more words sung together
less silence.
Mistakes I’ve Made
I once bought a pickup truck
with only front wheel drive
on a credit card. I left my dog
in Ohio. I once married a man
because he asked. Then
I got lost. Once I did something
for money, another time
when I should have gotten money
I only got piles and piles of salt.
Micah Ling is a freelance writer who lives in a mountain town in
Colorado. Find more of her work at www.micahelizabethling.com.