How I Am

She asks how I am

And so, how am I?

My days are the usual day

I wake up, I go out

Time goes by

My days are exactly the days

I have lived since arriving here

In fact, how I am is amazed how

This comforts me year by year

I work and I eat

Life is muffins and jam

The house is nice and quiet now

That is how I am

Five years in these rooms

Reading Hegel and Kant

My mind is devoted to thoughts

On the meaning of life

What more could I want?

So why is it lately I find

I’m uneasy all through the night?

And why even now does my skin

Feel explosive as dynamite?

Why does my heart pound

Like a battering ram?

How can she ask me how I am?

How I am is fine!

“Dear Miss March, there is nothing

Dramatic or new to report

This will be short

Morning and evening I live

In my usual way

On the day you return

You will see for yourself

Tell me Miss March, are you happy so far

From the clang and the beat of our turbulent street?

Quite often I think of our days in New York

Though of course since you went I have been quite content."

Ach!

I wake in the morning

And all that I hear

Is the absence of sound

Yes!

My peace is disturbed

But the ruckus is me

As my thoughts run aground

I wanted a life by myself in these rooms

And now all around me another life looms

Who asked her to come and to go

And to leave me like that?

And now she expects me to send her a note?

With words, if I spoke, that would stick in my throat

Who asked her to change how I live, how I think

How I am?

She asks how I am

How can I reply

I go through my daily routine

I give lessons, I wait

Time goes by

Yet lately I find there is

Pleasure in humming a silly tune

And some days I go to the park

And I sit there all afternoon

Some evenings I swear

I can hear a door slam

The house is far too quiet now

That is how I am