there's a person in there!

(When I wrote this poem, I was 'under the influence' of St. John's Wort. I don't normally attempt to write poetry. Most of my 'experiences' over the past few years have involved meeting people and then losing them. It makes it difficult to have stable, normal relationships. I'm afraid of losing people. It's especially bad to try to meet people on the internet and have long-distance relationships with them. And it's hard to 'be myself' whenever I'm so often a slave, a puppet for words that are not my own. I don't know who I'd be if I were really alone. The 'trains' image comes from the Nazi concentration camps. The phrase 'there's a person in there!' was something that 'the voices' said to me, along with 'no more insight than you.')



there's a person in there!

what a fragile hold you have on them:
you don't know
when, where, or why they come and go.
two freight trains travel opposite ways
and they both slow down at once one day, then
slave one cries, 'help me, dear friend,
is that you?'
'how can i help?' calls back slave two.
'i have no more insight than you.'
slave one says 'is that where you are?
i can't even see you from this far.'
their blind eyes meet through an invisible fence
in discreet - recognition, shared experience -
the two trains start,
their connection breaks.
two separate cages of human freight... part...
and not they nor anyone ever knew
if slave one had ever really known slave two.
(but still the cameraderie was real
for in some way all slaves know how other slaves feel.)