What I am.

Location

Soon they’ll be sitting me down in cold metal chairs, wearing their sanitized hazmat suits.

They keep a layer of protection between us and them, afraid I might be dirty.

Wearing their thick latex gloves that ‘snap’ when they put them on, and lean in close with dark beady eyes.

Eyes were supposed to be the windows to the soul. What do you see when there’s no soul looking back?

They’ll lean in close, smelling like rubber and concentration and sweat, and they’ll look down at me with those soulless eyes.

Then they ask, “What are you?”

I don’t answer. When you’re searching, you start large:

What keeps the universe together? An invisible fabric of space and time? What keeps the oxygen from floating away into the vacuum of space? Does it rhyme?

We know it has something to do with the science of our planet, yet in the infinite realm of possibilities, we could be wrong, right?

How should we know what brilliance of science or act of god(s) makes the synapses between my brain cells communicate to one another?

They ask us for the unknown, for the concrete and cold, as if we can stick a scalpel into ourselves. Perhaps the answer is something less objective. As the phenomena of all life is not objective, but art. Art. The art of inhaling and exhaling that we call life.

I can think therefore, I am, right? Wrong.

But we’re getting close, something with art. It’s on the tip of my tongue.

There is an art to everything.

The art of love, how certain hormones are released telling us to love that person.

The art of hate, certain body language signals tipping off our brains to distrust or become hostile.

The art of thought, and I draw a blank. What am I?

We are made of the stuff of stars. Stars, swirling incendiaries of gasses, and chemical reactions. Celestial life given to us by creation.

I am a star. What makes me tick is the explosive reactions my thoughts have with one another, their ignition into my brain creates what I call ‘thought’.

I think, therefore, I am.

 
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