Lost

I know what I’ve done wrong. You aren’t supposed to end a sentence with the word be. I have to be a mother or not. I have to be a thinker or not. I have to be a worker or not. I have to be a lover or not. It isn’t proper to just be.

I thought I was a seeker, or maybe that’s just what I wanted to believe. Now I know I was born to lose the world inside myself, and that’s the problem. The world doesn’t want to be lost. People strive to be found. There is no stability in not knowing what to do. There is no comfort in waiting. All around me, problems, complaints, urgencies.

I open the windows when the tractors hit the field, and spring’s powdery coat wraps around town, leaving golden dunes to gather in the creases of the bedsheets. I stand in the window, breathing in the grit. A nuisance, my neighbors say, after bragging about finding fresh corn on the cob for twenty-five cents an ear.

It’s difficult to believe I’m wrong just because my thoughts aren’t clustered in the collective, but the alternative is frightening.