In the Space Between

  

They defy our grasp,

stretching the boundaries so thin between what they are and what they aren’t 

- able and incompetent, brilliant and bewildered, needy and transcendent- 

that they create absence 

rather than essence. 

 

They suck the air out of the room.  

They impress and disappoint, comfort and excoriate,

with only a gesture 

or a word, 

often in the same moment.

We adore them, we hate them, we imbue them with our own sense of self –

 interpreting their otherness through the lens 

of our own vulnerability.

They can be their own undoing.

Or ours.

Who are they?  

We know them when we see them. 

They’re under our skin.  

-Consistently inconsistent, unfathomably difficult, teetering between brilliance and defiance, differently motivated. 

Sweetly confused. 

Flayed with sensitivity. 

They can be defiant, depressed, disorganized, determined. 

Breath-takingly kind, deftly aware.  

Whatever they are, 

it’s never what we expect at the moment.  

Misunderstood.  

In the space between, 

in the space of a sigh, 

they will 

upend, 

realign, 

reconfigure,

reimagine

and resurface 

our world.

What then?