Questions in the Mind of a Poet While She Washes Her Floors by Elena Giorgiou

Questions in the Mind of a Poet While She Washes Her Floors
Elena Giorgiou

Will obedience leave me unknown to myself, stranded?

Is it enough for me to know where I’m from?

If I do more truth-telling will I be happier with what I say?

If I had three days to live would I still be sensible?

Is the break between my feelings and my memory
the reason I’m unable to sustain rage?

Am I a peninsula slowly turning into an island?

If I grew up gazing at the ocean would I think
life came in waves?

If I were a nomad would I measure time
by the length of a footstep?

If I can see a cup drop to the floor and shatter
why can’t I see it gather itself back together?

If a surgeon cut out my mistakes
would the scar be under my heart?

How much time will I spend protecting myself
from what the people I love call love?

Would my desires feel different if I lived forever?

Will my desires destroy my politics?

Is taboo sex the ultimate aphrodisiac?

If I fall in love with the wrong person
How do I learn to un-in love myself?

Can I make my intuition into a divining rod?

Is music the closest I can get to God?

How many of these questions will remain
when I kneel to wash my floors again?

MARGINALIA

I don’t know how much longer I can take this, being in the hospital day in, day out. I have an irrational fear of these walls ever since I could remember, but as long as my mother needs me to take care of her, there’s nothing else I can do. In the wee hours, while everybody else is asleep, I take deep breaths and try not to hyperventilate. I try not to lock myself in the bathroom, put my head between my knees. I miss the house. I miss my makeshift bed on the floor beside my bookshelf. I miss cleaning my office when I have many things to think about. I miss wrapping my tiny life around myself.