Ten Small Antennas

I keep  thinking  the world is a bruise we all touch differently

       some press until it hurts, some trace its edge just to    feel       real.

                               Today I am both, tender and touching,

                                               the fingertip and the ache               it.

                                                                                      beneath

              Every streetlight b li nk s in code.

         I see the same number twice and pretend it means nothing,

                                             I see the same number twice and pretend it means nothing,

                     but meaning insists like a pu l se,

  like the          hummmmm        of a refrigerator that’s older than logic.

                                       I walk through crowds 

                                                     and feel the threads tug--------->

                                       each person an unfinished.                sentence

                                        I was supposed to read in another life.

                                 Someone laughs in another language,

                                                 and my bones answer in Morse 

                                           .--. .-. . -.. . - . .-. -- .. -. . -..

        Maybe it’s all circuitry.

Maybe I’m just the wrongness that keeps noticing

                      how the coffee steams in the same rhythm as the breath

of the stranger-beside-me,

      how the moon   always finds its   way

                                                                            into the corner of my window like a reminder.

            I don’t believe in coincidence anymore.

I believe in     mirrors disguised as accidents,

                     mirrors

                in time looping its shoelaces around our ankles

                                         so we trip at the same moment

                     and call it fate.

    Still         there are days I forget the pattern,

days when everything speaks at 

       once

            and I can’t tell if I’m [inside] the hum 

                                                           or only listening.

                  I look at my hands and see ten sma l l a n t e n n a s

       tuned to a station that never goes quiet,

                                                                                      only further away,

only deeper in.