1.

In retrospect I'd been waiting
For years, never speaking.
Never needing to learn. I listened

To the motorbikes, fumes swirling '
From the street below—so many

People, so many ways to be alive and
I'd been given one: a narrative
In which each new event subsumed

The purpose of one preceding it—no reason
Ever to look back and therefore

No impetus to look away; no need
To imagine a future because it was

Waiting, beyond my control.