If you exist in this reality —
the one we all share — then
what is the cleat hitch
keeping you here?

They say you’re not your body.
Your body, just a vessel for your soul
or consciousness or mind, whatever.
Descartes’s whole thing stemmed
from being able to imagine himself as something else,
and you can too — yourself as
a stellar’s jay knocking seeds all over a porch,
a black bear lumbering over a log post-torpor —
your consciousness still there.
If you lose your foot, you may be
less of a body, but not less of a person.

They say you’re not your thoughts.
The echoes you hear are from someone else
who has no body (probably), lives somewhere
you cannot see, don’t have a name for.
Or, they’re just electric impulses, chemical reactions
from organs you don’t even control —
your body can’t trust you with them.
Sometimes, when you drive to work,
fold laundry, your mind leaves you anyway.
You can’t leave yourself; you’re stuck with yourself
until the battery runs out.

If you exist at all, maybe
you’re just a shadow in the fluid
around a ball of electric meat
inside a collagen cage.