[Written by Sherlock Crockett]
[Image by Alice Hill-Woods, Creative Writing Editor (@alice35mm)]
I ask myself the same question until I can’t remember the answer.
I figure that I can reach my limit,
that I can choose to lose truth’s whisper
and lose myself in the process. I struggle
to make it so that maps will never matter.
I want to forget the street under my feet until I’m standing in a garden
and then I perfect the art; no longer will I be held by this garden
I’ve created in my head. You ask; I answer:
maps always matter
because you can’t see gardens like you can see roads and limits
of this country I struggle
to forget. Green house blue, red now, gone now, just a whisper.
I make locations like I whisper;
sour nothings in my own ear; ephemeral gardens
that only ever bore struggle
and never any answers.
I don’t know how to limit
myself. Like Gods, my own head makes and unmakes matter.
Did it ever really matter?
They whisper,
“You are trapped in these limits,
these walls. Look to the garden;
you’ll never make it there. That’s your answer.”
I am born again on the sempiternal struggle.
I choose not to struggle
in an attempt to become an artist on the matter
of being lost in pursuit of an answer.
I am no wanderer in pursuit of the whispers
of the wind. I am obsessed with being naturalized in this garden
only to reach that point where I cannot lose my parts; my limits.
I unmake myself at my beloved limits.
I don’t know how to pronounce, define, or spell struggle,
so please, do not ask me what it means. I can only garden.
All that matters
is that, with a whisper,
I can grow my own bouquet of useless answers.
O garden of struggle, don’t answer
when this limit sings to you of whispers.
Learn to grow, so your harvest and your fruit don’t matter.
