Poetry

Maybe the future is a story that hates to wait

Me, personally, I think stories are starving to be told.
I think there are millions there, jostling and elbowing
To get to the parachute bay and snatching any chance
Whatsoever, no matter how remote, to get themselves
Told at last, or retold—the latter meaning born again,
Really. Consider the immortality implications of that.
Maybe stories are like kids who are ideas before flesh.
Maybe kids are ideas who get laboriously fleshed out,
Like novels. Maybe children are made of stories more
Than they are of bone and hair and turkey sandwiches.
Maybe the way to think of a teenager is as a wry story
That's all verb and no object as yet. Maybe we guzzle
Forty stories with every breath we draw and they soak
Into us and flavor and thicken and spice the wild stew
We are. Maybe we are all the stories we ever told and
Will tell when they let us see their gleaming first lines.
Maybe the future means a vast story that hates to wait.
Maybe we are made of more stories we forgot than of
Stories we think to remember. Maybe what we forget
Are stories that realize they were in the wrong mouth.
Maybe every story has to find the right teller. Maybe I
Had to wait all this time to be able to tell you this story.