They tell me I am known.
Which is funny.
Because the cashier at the grocery store
still asks if I've found everything alright
as though I haven't spent twenty years
trying to lose it.
A poem gets published.
Someone shares it.
Someone quotes a line
beside a photograph of a sunset
that had absolutely nothing to do with me.
For a brief moment,
I become important enough
to be forgotten by strangers.
That seems to be the arrangement.
A man spends half his life
building a name,
then watches it float away
like a grocery receipt
caught in a parking lot windstorm.
The birds know more about me
than most readers.
At least they see me regularly.
The crows inspect my habits.
The gulls critique my posture.
One sparrow has followed my decline
with admirable dedication.
Meanwhile,
someone introduces me as
"a well-known poet"
and I nearly choke on my coffee.
Known?
I can't remember why I walked
into the kitchen this morning.
My own reflection
looks vaguely familiar at best.
The truth is,
everybody is a mystery
wearing a nametag.
Some are simply printed
in larger fonts.
The celebrated,
the forgotten,
the drunks,
the saints,
the editors,
the men feeding ducks
behind abandoned shopping centers.
all of us carrying entire universes
that never make it into conversation.
So yes,
perhaps I am known.
In the same way
a lighthouse is known
by ships that never step ashore.
They recognize the light.
They never meet the keeper.
And even the best known among us
remain wonderfully,
ridiculously,
unknown.
Leon Drake's work has appeared in Spill The Words Press, Synchronized Chaos, Horror Sleaze Trash, S.A.V.A. Press and The Crossroads Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review and The Literary Underground.
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