tuckova

It's hard to enter a room without soaking up all the emotion in it. If
you watch what you're doing it is okay, because you can absorb amazing
quantities. Just take in what wants to be observed, one quick coast
across the surface, the prepared face. Then slide under the surface of
that to find the secrets. It can be done. But a moment's inattention
and you're taking in too much, more than you can. Or should. Touch of a
hand and you have cleaned the spill and taken off the layer of the
surface and now you've got a mess you didn't mean. Something to cover
up. You shouldn't have seen that, you say, that shouldn't have
happened, I shouldn't know this, it was too secret, but also you keep
looking to see if that's really what you saw. You cannot pretend for
long that you intend the best if you are going to insist on being so
curious, yellow and blue.

And it's hard to remember that most of
what you absorbed was meant to be discarded. You chop insults and carry
grudges all day long, til there is no time left for anything else.
Squeeze the secrets from you and there will be nothing left of you;
squeeze away those things you weren't meant to keep and you will be as
empty as the cracked bowl. In the absence of what you've collected you
would be so empty that you could never be filled; not even suitable for
folded bits of paper. They wouldn't throw you out because of
sentimental value, and that is all.

So this is what you hold: nothing of your own. Nothing you were meant to have.