I’m no longer posing so much in private. Mirrors,

windows, chrome of toasters. Still, those years positioning

hair, polishing skills of standing and leaning. As if someone

was watching. As if clerks were downloading gestures

to data files, row after row of zeroes and ones. I am

practical enough. Gravity, decay, being struck by lightning

over and over. Not slowing down I understand. Still, I’ll be

stopping above the river where clouds of exhaustion

fill the valley. I’m trying to square condominium dismay

with loving the buzz and glitz of town, coffee on sidewalks,

green umbrellas. Someone was watching. This one knew me

from candid photographs, trailed me on sidewalks, didn’t bother

blending in. Paranoia, I know. I’m this important. That

wasn’t why. I wanted translucency, being in doubt, there (perhaps)

then gone if I was. Still, the same immersion in self. Me please.

Me again. It’s good to be lost in stacks of resumes, better

lost in another’s needs: food, water, lifting from bed, checking

meds on the pantry door painted like chalkboard. None of this

fancy. Task-to-task abnegation of self. When I paused

washing the breakfast dishes, I didn’t ask how possible it was

to live and be happy. I asked myself, what does she need?

Scott Davidson grew up in Montana, worked as a Poet in the Schools and lives with his wife in Missoula. His poems have appeared in Southwest Review, Bright Bones: Contemporary Montana Writing, and the Permanent Press anthology Crossing the River: Poets of the Western United States.