Poem: December 15, 2019

Qualia

I take a bite
of an oatmeal cookie,
my grandmother's recipe,
and I am changed,

I ache, for lack of
a better word, in ways
you do not ache
when you bite into
the same cookie, the same
grandmother's recipe,

which demonstrates
the difficulty of being
a human, I suppose.

I do not equal you.
My ache is not your ache.
Your itch is not mine,

and all of our separate,
blind and restless fumblings
within this world go
essentially undefined.

Language, so inadequate,
traps us in our cruel
and foolish binary state:
Me-Not Me. You-Not You.

So you bite the cookie
and you do not ache.

But the cookie is good.
Enjoy the cookie.