Delisted in the building directory, my name stripped from my cramped quarters just off the corpus callosum, I am impossible to find. In petitioning for official reinstatement, I have agreed to the humiliating lab investigations required for documentation. I have waved, howled, screamed, pleaded, and moaned into the latest scanners, and generally made a fool of myself. But researchers, after extensive soul-searching, and being unable to capture me as pixels and waveforms, have moved on to greener pastures. So be it. I accept official non-existence.
Hiding in plain sight isn’t all bad. No longer preoccupied with dreams of relevance, I now spend my days wandering ill-lit corridors, browsing poorly cataloged stacks of old memories, bits and pieces of unfinished ideas, abandoned feelings, and thoughts too slight for words. In these uncharted nooks and crannies, hidden beneath the rubble of misguided reason, I wait for you.
If only you could shove aside disbelief and embrace me as if I were real. But I understand. Unless the winds of mythology shift direction, I am permanently off-the-grid.
I don’t blame science. Just as I am not numerical, neither am I poem and psalm, chapter and verse, dogma and upbringing. I am more than the voice of solitude, the warmth of comfort, the song of love, and the agony of loss. I am what will remain unsaid when all else is revealed.
