Saturday Afternoon

She was a young woman now. She sat on her bed and her heart ached. It ached with deep longing for completion and meaning. For relationship and a shared life. She sensed that depth existed. She felt the call to intense waters, to balance, to encountering a soul, a place, that would shift her own and give the whole a moment of ecstasy. Give her a moment of ecstasy. To fill a latent potential. To strike her match. She longed to burn. Every shifting center has a million purposes through which it is fulfilled. Through which it provides fulfillment. A match when lit, a doll when played with, a car when driven. The earth, we, endow beings with the gift of giving. And those moments of realization of purpose are orgasms, fulfillment, divinity, life. This pen, this ink, this paper, ecstasy. They satisfy the greater situation and so satisfy themselves. But she, where did she fit? Who could write poems with her form? She longed to spill ink. Longed. Was a writer near? She was within her grasp. She smelled a life that she knew long ago. Before she understood anything at all. A candle stand, molded, elaborate, a foot or two tall reminded her of a bygone era, that lived deep within them all. What were all the surfaces referencing? Children, technology, money, Africa, god? Her bedroom told a story of enslavement, though she could not exactly say why. Four walls, a single window, sharp edges, space. No matter where she looked, there she was, within those four walls. They contained her mind. The "outside" shaded and glassed. And there she rested in the middle. Minute, staring at herself from all directions. Floating in space. She breathed in chilled air. Her mother told her people believed in empty space once they stopped seeing the air as a being. A being she had an intimate relationship with, yet she could still only think of molecules and space. A wall separated her and her brother. Floating in boxes in space. Calm because it was Saturday afternoon.