My Road

I think I’m OK.
Intellectually, I think I understand.
Emotionally, I don’t know how to stand.

I’m on a road.
I’m being carried forward by my own legs.
I wonder how they do that.

The world was transformed just now.
The road violently re-routed and my guide is gone.
It used to make sense, now it’s some Kafkaesque mess.

My guide helped me understand this road.
We travelled and watched the world together.
Now the views are familiar, but not the same.

Things are missing. I can only see this road.
There are no alternatives. Side roads are closed.
Overgrown so completely, so quickly. Opportunities lost.

I can only travel forward on this road,
though I’d like to move back, it’s not allowed.
Little hands pulling forward, pushing forward.

I want to look back more often than I do.
The bricks we danced were yellow. The road was wide.
The cross-roads we decided were many. The road was musical.

The road forward is silent.
A hot sun bakes the cobblestones. The stones are old.
I wonder how stones can look tired.

The road forward is long.
I sense it. These strange stones are preparing me.
I feel the road’s length, though it winds and dips out of view.

Maybe this road ends just around this next corner,
where it vanishes behind the future.
But I know it doesn’t, I know my road is long.

“I don’t know how you do it… How do you cope?”
They mean this is a road not meant for walking.
They will not walk it. They cannot walk it.

A black veil hangs in front of their eyes.
Even if lifted, there is nothing to see.
Their imagination refuses the theory of mind challenge, though they want to meet it.

Their feet will not touch this road.
But ahead they are reaching from the roadside,
sustaining, encouraging, my legs and the little hands.

Ahead, they are lighting the way;
illuminating the potholes they can see,
though I’ll stumble on ones they don’t.

Their lights vanquish loneliness shadows.
They are close and I feel their warmth,
though they are not on the road, and I feel alone still.

I would not choose this road they are watching me walk.
It doesn’t seem to fit my gait.
But my gait will change on this long, silent, hard road.

I hope my guide would be proud of how I walk it.