At first he couldn’t help pretending
to be himself as he went about his days
and read his nights away, as he always had—
novels and poetry—but after a while
he forgot to pretend he was he for longer
and longer stretches of the evening, and became
someone even he wouldn’t have
recognized. He still dressed in his accustomed
clothing, spoke in the voice we knew well,
worked with focus and clarity, and followed
the interests he’d loved since childhood, chiefly
avant-garde music, homeopathy,
and Zen. In social situations he laughed
a little too loudly, and sometimes he said things
he regretted later, as he always had,
while friends—they were acquaintances really—
whispered he’d be fine after all and went back
to other more personal concerns. And so
gradually he couldn’t help letting go
of the version of self he’d pretended. He called this
the Tao of cut-down trees, and rivers
that flow underground, with rapids and waterfalls
and fish without eyes, that feel their way through
the dark in the same way we all felt ourselves
coming to self as we neared the moment
we were born, as we felt our mother’s heartbeat
and listened to the world outside her; and slowly
he stopped pretending to be who he had been;
he let go of language, of manners, of memories
and let himself vanish into minerals and mysteries,
the swirling and the still. He stood there like everything
he’d once been made of, and nothing at all,
and he cried like a wound for his loss, and slowly
he healed like a wound does, and vanished.