MechanicsCarl Phillips
I remember almost nothing now
of who he was, or how I was,
around him. I can make that matter,
or I don’t have to, it doesn’t
have to matter,
any more than the small
moth I watched struggling in
what appeared to be—torn and
otherwise empty—an abandoned
web: there was time, yet,
I might have freed it, but even
in abandonment, in what had
been abandoned—the web,
maybe, but now the moth
for sure—I saw the ghost of purpose
still having a purpose—hard not
to respect that. It’s as if
the mind somewhere
means to shut down memory,
that way preventing us from
understanding too clearly
our own unhappiness, and
in place of memory, offers up
belief. We believe we’re happy.