Changeling II and Other Poems

By C.G. Nelson

 

Changeling II

There is a shift in me—

One I can hardly explain.

I’m a different person

Than I used to be.

I don’t know

What to tell you.

How can I tell you

Anything when

I don’t even know

The how or why or

Even the when

Of the thing.

All I know is that

I’m a different person

Than I used to be.

Passions shift,

As if processing the wind

On wings.

I watch my mind

Ebb and flow,

Switching between loving

And hating wildly

Different things.

I’m sitting on the

Edge of the world

Contemplating strings.

What about my prior attachments?

What about my dreams?

I filter my life

Through a sieve—

What is necessary to

Keep me connected at the seams?

How much of me can change

Before I forget my name?

How often do I have to sit still

Just to remain the same?

But I am not the same.

I am the foam atop waves,

Crashing down and down again.

By the time I hit the shore,

How little of me remains!

I am tired…

I think I’ll lay upon the beach.

Maybe I’m the cosmos—

Ever-expanding from a single point!

Reaching my arms farther and farther,

Reaching for all-encompassing,

All-seeing

Understanding.

But how can I say?

I hardly recognize my face.

Perhaps I take up the

Same amount of space

As a grain of sand

On a beach’s hand.

I cannot tell you

What makes up me.

I can only tell you

I’m a different person

Than I used to be.
Ribbon

In a hardly lit room,

You find me slumped over a

Typewriter from the 70s.
The dear thing hardly works

And the ribbon bucks and cries.

The buttons stick often,

Clinging to each other

With an embrace stronger than I have known.
But this is where you

Find me.
It is scarcely five in the morning,

The street lamp is my one boon companion.
As I adjust the ribbon for the hundredth time,

The ink stains my hands.
Nothing will adjust

So that I may communicate.
Wipe the ink off

Your hands…

Or everyone

Will know.
Either Or

You are a liminal space–

You know, the way

Doors and windows and skies

Are liminal spaces.
A collection of beginnings and ends

That meet and whisper secrets.
Like the aurora borealis is

Just all the tendrils of days

That stood on the precipice.
Where does day end?

And where does night begin?
Everytime you stand in a doorway,

You stand in a threshold.
Within and without.
So I tell you again:

You are a liminal space.
With you, I hardly know

Where I begin and where

You end.
I don’t dare to take a step…
Where night turns to day,

Where glass meets air,

Where the year meets its end,
It could be safe to walk

Into that space–

Into the room–

Or it could be walking off a cliff.
That’s the problem with liminal spaces.
You never know which.

 

C.G. Nelson has been an avid reader of poetry since she was thirteen years old. Her first loves were Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. C.G. Nelson is a new poet. She went to the University of Washington, where she graduated with a degree in English and Philosophy. You can find her on Twitter @CGNelsonwrites.