When the Coconut finally came into my hands,
I thought the same thoughts as all who held it before me:
that it and I are in fact twins in our imprisonment,
here alone in a silent shell,
and that our inability to be known
is broken only by a rare somebody’s rarer desire
to actually feel what lies inside.

“Misunderstood” is the cry of the crowd,
and a listening ear, and an eye aware
are the medicines long ignored.
Only figures like the Coconut,
growing on its dreamy Caribbean trees far away,
appeal to my desire of connection,
and those right with me in the dismal cold,
crying out dying for another to taste their sweet within,
seem to amount only to the percussive flick
of another soul dancing lightly along my shell.