Walks with my family
down to the ice cream place,
and eating a peanut butter parfait
right in front of them,
I imagined I was eating myself.
The first layer was always
the part of me that might
regenerate into a tree
or some dog barking at a clothesline
somewhere in Peru,
much different than the second
layer which was always the soul
or what the body contained.
Which was the final layer.
After the body was gone
I couldn’t find a me anywhere.
But maybe the mystery of the me
is like the sun,
and only appears to vanish,
when in fact
it’s just the ground we’re standing on
that makes a wall
so we can’t see it for a little while.
Of course there’s always the tiramisu
down the street by the theatre,
or the vegan carrot cake
in the place over by the bridge
to pass through.