truest

when not aware. i wish i knew all the similar-
ities we share with inanimate objects. i want to know what makes
my microwave feel pain. want to know
what makes it smile. or, say, those things which we
keep closest contact to. a belt, a sock, an undershirt.
do they feel each
rise and fall of our sinusoidal emotional motions?
is another person any different from another object.
a matter of the level of abstraction. if something creates heat
is it not alive? if there was some definable, describable
difference between warmth, feeling, and wisdom. but when cold
nothing else even enters into the picture. so what difference
could there be.
the truest form of life. most condensed. heat.
we are more complicated and therefore more diluted, less
alive. a life, so transient, and an inanimate, eternal, if not for life.
still don’t know the difference. time of the plastics: bring it on.
age of the aluminums. no difference. quieter if anything,
at least at first. noise always comes later, later in life.
given a choice to be inanimate: me: i just don’t know.
what of them: would they choose: say a simple punctuation,
a colon: would it want something more, or less, from life?
i don’t presume to know. if you do then you would be a liar,
but what’s keeping you? not i, for i am one too at times.
we each play every role, each lifetime or two. next time i’d
like to be a toaster.