Imagine.

To be able to be

so good, so bad, and so gloriously mediocre.
I might think I’d like to be so good—
like they’ll find even my lamest words when I’m dead,
and we all gasp: Well, what a voice!

What of the space where we find ourselves undone in this gasping way?
A place where all the ghosts come out for the gathering,
a Christmas market! or angels in a manger, muscular wise men, primo ballerinas glistening sweat from dance after dance after dance beneath holy robes—

past, present, future—we high-five.

It’s the lot of us,
winking knowingly at each other— eye contact to eye contact,
nodding in little bows, and toasting:
[around and around, behind dusty sheets with eye holes cut out, or invisible legs snugged into new, leather trousers]—
to the miracle carried forward.