Javanese Meditation

I have never faced 90 mile per hour winds
to feel the leaves flick my skin.
I've never stepped in a rain puddle and learned it is shin-deep.
I have never laid in my bed – one leg under the sheet
and the other so the fan's air grazes up my thigh;
sprawled across the kitchen floor and measured my shame
to begin with a heart beat and end with the next;
laid on a yellowed comforter with my toes in the tears
and smelled my niece in the seams.

I have yet to sit crisscrossapplesauce and listen
for the walls to tell me about international politics.
I haven't grinned an insomniac chuckle, and I haven't
gone to my desk and recorded everything in a second's
notebook. Penciling what I remember and knowing
that a quarter of it is lie.

I have not tried to remember anything.
The split thread I keep trying to shove through the eye
and pinch on the other side. Fingers never close enough
to grasp the passive hair and my slightest breath
always able to blow it away. Tongue out and against my upper lip
until I can feel my teeth through it– drying from exposure
and still drooling. The thread, wet from my spit, slacks
and I can't try again.