With the question asked of so many poets
What would it be like
They ask
To discover a brand new color?
To hear a sound you'd never imagined before?
Why bother,
With such silly ideas
I said
When so much to discuss
Is already loaded and cocked
Ready to shoot out of our pens
Onto the page.
I've come to understand
In these moments
Since I've met you
How beautiful that question is.
Coming at it backwards.
Because what is a color
What is a sound
But a feeling, waiting to happen?
Here it is
This thing I've never had the pleasure of feeling before
Pouring straight into my ribcage
With only a hint of permission
And wrapping around me on the inside
Promising me.
Promising.
And I know now why poets have been asked
What of new senses?
It is so we could tell you
This is what.
This is me opening up
With a hint of permission
To a thing I didn't know
I was even allowed to have an opinion of.
This is me
Staring
With open eyes
Calling upon a part of myself
I haven't used since I was a child
The part of myself that receives, without pretense
An introduction
To a brand new experience
Accepting
That it is a part of the world.
Like the first time I looked into a computer screen
The first time I realized
If you look at the moon
You can see a landscape
The first time I stepped into a body of water
That wasn't a bathtub
Or swimming pool
But an ocean
A river
A water of God
This is me losing a virginity
I had forgotten how to lose
To a force I had forgotten
Could be wonderful
Re-learning that the trade-
Virginity for Experience-
Could be fair.
This is the sound of something I have never heard before
This is a color I already know
Looks good on me
Before I even look at it
This is what it looks like to introduce myself
To something that wants inside of me
As much as it knows
I will want it inside of me
Once it is there.
