And You?

By Renata Certo-Ware

You talk too much. For no one other than You. Except, You don’t exist. Not without four hard walls to project Your echoes onto, a sound chamber of Your own genius. 

You’ve never even seen Yourself. Yet You’re so sure You're there. The ultimate God complex; You’re Your own religion, the leader and the congregation. Your flock, although singular in number, is obsessed, fervent with adoration and teary-eyed with love; red-faced with indignation and spitting mad.

Assert Yourself, make them see: It was You all along, You had the answer, have always had the answer. It’s just like You were saying - it’s just as You said it would be, even though we couldn’t see it then. We were blind, we were nonbelievers.

All the times You were wrong before, the times Your taste was sour, were just part of Your evolution, part of the creation process. The process that led to You, a masterpiece.

You’re as intangible and disruptive as a rolling thunder cloud, dark and heavy and destructive but tossing and bucking lamely, slipping through grasping fingers.

You know just how to avoid measurement, how to manipulate appraisal. And how to make one feel bald and naked for questioning You, for wondering what smoke You are made from.

Listening to You sermonize killed time while the bones of Myself, buried and scattered miles beneath the old city, found each other and rejoined, coughed up dust and sprung up to dance again.

Lucky for You, I like abstractions, distractions; at least for a little while.

You talk about You.

You never ask “And You?”

Image by Malik Earnest