love, read, write

i remember the last time i went to a zoo i saw

a chimpanzee at the back corner of the enclosure and i stood in

the stale air under dim lighting listening to children laughing, 

pointing, the spotlight illuminating his face

with an expression i could feel. maybe i was projecting.

i wondered how much he understood 

of his container-dom, if he knew what lay between us 

this cruel barrier encasing knowledge from something more, hiding

in darkness. pointing fingers. eyes watching.

he scratched his armpit and the children around me giggled

but of course he wouldn't know, we were so close but

he was in a different world.

the lights are out. in my apartment

thin drywall and dim comfort feign my solitude until

i hear my neighbor sneeze through the wall.

the clarity of his voice crawls up my 

back as it dawns on me that i was a creature

in glass all this time, enclosed into a private

exhibit of which my neighbor was my audience

and I his, to his sneeze and his other expressions,

just as he heard all of my cries made in my glass solitude.

i am terrified.

nowhere am i safe, even at home i am

in a zoo, the laughing audience just outside of my

cognition no different from that

chimpanzee. he must be tired. i am tired.

i feel deeply isolated yet relentlessly observed

and i wish to break the wall or fill it up entirely– 

or maybe what i need is to hide, just once,

under something impenetrable enough to blanket me 

warm and hidden in the shade of a night's sleep

purely my own.