Ode from a Doormat

(Prose poem in process.)

You may think I'm so low, that I don't matter, that I am crushable and beneath you, but consider how I work. Consider how I have survived. I take your dirt, but I am not your dirt. Yes, you wipe your heels on me, and because you do, I know nearly everything about you, where you've been, what you're likely to do next.

You don't value me, it's true. But does that mean I have no value? Perhaps I get along best allowing you to believe what you want to believe, think you are above me, superior, in charge. Are you though? When you are dust, your dust will find a place on me as well. On me, not in me.

Maybe this is not the life for you. But it is a life, believe it or not. It may not be your life. It may terrify you. I sense your fear, through your soles. I can tell you are wearing out… just look at those scuff marks. But what would it accomplish to say anything about that?

We doormats know how and why we keep our counsel. Doormat confessionals are few and far between, and when they come, they often reveal far less about the doormat than about those who've walked on or over us. We doormats are a private sort of folk. Why would we be otherwise?

Notes found in empty space

Undefined. Small words, small worlds. Small thoughts

Lost in definite indefinition

Antispeller antichrist anticapitalizer

Lost empires, no more deaths tonight

Killed enough electronic children, we think

Lost too many

Found more.

Phantom houses, phantom decorators

Nothing

Living in the house that we bought for your mother

Not living in, living around

Being told to live

Being told to think like you think like your mother thinks

Under water

Under ground

Wishing for death on a daily basis

Charting death but unrealistically

Falling to pieces by degrees

Zero understanding

Zero tolerance

Zero life