The world encouraged me to complete
my doctorate in shamelessness. “You’ll hurt
to not be part of all this interface
and commerce,” I was warned, though
as soon as I declined I was rewarded
with a loneliness so pure that my ears
could not be found by bothersome words,
and my blood felt fed only by the air
and the light that lives beneath the glass of greenhouses.
My family, my former lovers, and the authorities
tried to talk to me, to sway me toward buildings
whose entrances have stern signs, but I stared
patiently at everybody’s face, each
lit from the same failing fire, and I
left them speechlessly, my movements constituting
a new species of worriless wind.
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