Liminal

POEM: P-03 · Liminal 2025 · 24 lines · 6 stanzas

an unread text, a missing piece
a shade that slipped through cracks in space
an open door, forgotten keys
a fallen angel, blessed disgrace.

i pass through walls, unheard, unseen
an echo of a waning moon
a pixel on a broken screen
a smile that faded all too soon.

i flicker, neither here nor there
a revenant just out of sight
not real enough for them to care
if i would linger, stay the night.

the precipice of life and death
the two-spin state that i've called life
ever since i took my first breath
unprepared for ceaseless strife.

no stars that I have not traversed
to find a thread where i belong
in the fabric of the universe
no harmony befits my song.

a fleeting thought, a crinkled note
i live on through the little things
over dreaming souls, i float
on silvery clouds, on angels' wings.

Annotations

Stanza 4: two-spin state — a quantum metaphor; the speaker exists in superposition, neither alive nor dead, both at once.

Stanza 6: the closing image — floating over dreaming souls on silvery clouds — resolves the liminal not into being but into lightness, a dispersal rather than a landing.

Evolution

Written in the spring of 2020. The quantum imagery was added in the second draft; the first draft was more conventionally elegiac. The lowercase throughout is deliberate — the speaker does not warrant a capital.

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