Passion Project

Maureen Miller

Think about what you’re looking at, 
and who. “Another pair of eyes” is
“Make an effort, boo.”

I just don’t see what others see.
Theories of change are scare tactics to
train trainees to see not-I as
nothing you don’t already know,
which is to say un-me.

And what do I do? I hear this feedback
repeatedly, to which the best response
is no response, which is to say un-me,
the me one being meaning in which I just project

that you are “with it,” where I pseudo-expert
that you—which is to say, on me—are with
(I just don’t see what others see in me)

If I could just write death and the question,
say, the garden, I could quit my day job,
which, while being the determination of the 

cause of death, is not so interesting or abstract
as… not. You look at growth in else,
exuberant, papillary, as if “don’t take
this personal” manifests out of my morass
like rosettes of (pseudo-rosettes) of perivascular

… necrosis! And I see clearly 
now, emphasis on the word 
“of” above me: I am the vessel for the envy 
growth that hugs to us like famous 
deaths in threes.