(Mis)Interpretation

They say if you wait
things come to you-
as though the gravity
of your desire
could make things hurtle
toward you, toward you.
That the unstoppable force of your want
Could defeat the immutable fact of your mortality.
That between you and Time,
You could win.
Be patient.

That your hope
unformed, unspoken,
unclear, really
like a zygote-
before it becomes a foetus
with nails and hair
and heart
when it's just a possibility
nesting.
They say, wait:
as though if you waited
nine months
or five years
or a lifetime
this thing would Become.

I don't know.
Maybe it does,
maybe it doesn't.

The arctic moth,
waits fourteen seasons
of winter
for one brief, beautiful
spring.
Imagine that:
freezing, unfreezing,
and thinking
surely this must be the year
but it's not
just more cold, cold,
blood and guts frozen,
and then, then, then- flight.

One year I did nothing but watch
movies on my parents' 21"
and if my dreams and hopes
were nesting or being built in a cocoon,
they sure as hell didn't take flight
in a burst of radiance at the end of that year.
No sir, they did not.

Which is to say:
Sometimes I feel
I misinterpret life
That the things I think are
Maybe something else altogether.

And now I'm in a white room
with a hole in the wall
Missing the grammar
that would make sense of this all:
playing at chinese whispers
having to fake everything,
even the game.