from Wherever Clarity is Necessary

by Shanita Bigelow

1. Inside the I adjusts things. Inside is not hollow.

It is alive and growing; I, inside, also growing.

2. What the I has seen from the inside is difficult to describe

because it, like the I, is very dark. A better way to

describe vision from the inside is through touch, perhaps

smell, though both vary little.

3. What the I has felt, though difficult to describe, is

not as hard as you’d imagine—at times grainy,

moist, uncomfortable.

4. If there were more than one, a realm merely part

of some other, the I may get lost, may travel far-

ther than necessary. The I should not. It should not

transgress its own –ness, neither should it deny

other –nesses. This is a difficult spot. The I possesses

all –nesses and yet, the dark presupposes sight.

5. Various describes the months of endurance; various,

the countless faculties of choice in this place. Inside

there is a tree and this tree grows without any known source

of light. The source, though unknown, exists and growth,

growth counters any doubt of this.

6. What the I sees cannot be because of the dark

and yet, it is so. What it sees is not the source

but movement, various and growing.

7. To accept variety, the variety of I in all this is easy

for other –nesses, but the I itself is unaware of its

own variety, its own –ness in doubt. What creates

such doubt, such variety of sense in such a dark

place? Inside there is no time, only Was.

8. The past, measureless, exists in this dark like a root

and what is, is the growing without source. All that

surrounds the variety of this growing is at once dis-

astrous and calm; it is a precursor to time. I is not

alone and determines to overwhelm the dark with

the possibility of Could or Maybe. The I surmounts

Was only in time.

Shanita Bigelow, a North Carolinian, lives in Chicago where she works and writes. She has work forthcoming in NAP and African American Review.