A Character of a Poem

By Joyce Jacobo

[Author’s Note: I love experimenting with different types of characters.]

I am a character

  born from the words of this poem

       a fiction given textual life by a writer

My existence is a mystery to me

            Who am I at this very moment but a voice?

                   Do I belong to the writer or to myself?

               Where does imagination end—

                                                           and sentience begin?

                                  then once this poem stops . . .

              once it comes to The End

 when the writer lays aside her pen

                        what happens to me?

                                     Will you remember me?

                                 You would read these words

                  And will you wonder who I was—

                                                         Or could have been?

  Maybe I will regain consciousness

               Every time you read these lines

                                      Just maybe . . .

  Perhaps little voices like me in poems

          The bodiless kind that flicker in the minds of writers

                                       In quiet flights of whimsy

                    Take shape again as characters in stories

                                Where we have names and histories

                                               To live on our own apart from words

                                                              Despite a gratefulness to them

I hope we can meet again—

                           My friend

                                             . . . Some page

   Even if I you might never recognize you

                    And I have forgotten this moment

                               It may all fall apart now

                                     But I still thank you

                                      For

                                      This

                                        Moment

                                             To simply be Me . . .