ANATTA

Sorry, I'm not myself today. Lately,
I think I never am. I was yesterday

beside myself and from that angle
I could see the cracks and fissures,

the stitches and seams. So it seems
this shifting complex of cells—each a self

that buds and blossoms and sloughs—has some
sort of unified purpose, but fact is

they're merely confined, yoked to a cubicled
lifetime till they die and return for more

of the same. And so I am reborn,
even before I'm buried and broken

down into dirt. If today I'm not myself,
it's because I'm busy being everything else.