The Lonely Limb

It's not that I never throw anything out.  With pride I point to my battered trash can: it bulges with this month's string of scattered pearls, two iron pots (one with a broken handle, the other unsalvageably burnt), and a lonesome green mitten.  But those two papers in my closet, no.  One brings a knowing smile and the other a Mona Lisa grin.  I will part with neither.

The first wasn't meant to make me laugh; it was written in complete earnestness.  I had read Wilde's tale The Picture of Dorian Gray when I was twelve, and so impressed with it was I that I was moved to poetry.  That is, I thought it was poetry.  Inspired by such awesome rhymes as "longer" and "wronged her," and with a meter similarly creative, I retold Wilde's story.  In appreciative glee I now savor these stanzas.  There's just no way they're going to join those pots.

The second paper is a different slice of wry.  It's prose and called "The Lonely Limb," but despite its title I meant it to be funny.  Irony haunts me ever.  "The Lonely Limb" isn't funny at all; it's pathetic.  I was older when I wrote it, but still dwelling on Dorian.  Thus with feeble jests I speculated on what my own soul would look like if painted in oils.  Because I knew that others thought me strange and different, I decided that my portrait would show a tousle-haired girl balanced precariously on the limb of a leafless oak.  And then, curiously, I did depict my soul. 

It peeped from between the lines of my last paragraph "...I don't mind the limb so much‑-it's the fact that no one but me is on it that digs in.  So I'm captioning my soul's portrait 'Where Is Everyone?'.  I know my friends would feel better if I were to ask 'Where Am I?'.  That, they would say, at least shows I grasp the problem.  But I tend to feel that 'Where Am I?' is the wrong question.  After all, I know where I am‑-out on a limb, thinking of pictures."

The first time I reread that as an adult, I winced at the poignancy.  I realized, all too well, that it wasn't the limb that was lonely but me.  My immediate impulse was to rip the piece up; I wanted no one's pity, least of all my own.  Nevertheless I did not throw my work away.  For my gaze fell again on those last lines, and I saw two things I'd never really noticed before. 

First, even as a child I had had the guts to keep a viewpoint that was different, unacceptable, and lonely.  Now that kind of courage doesn't belong in the trash.

And second, I saw again my portrait's title, the question I had asked.  And I knew that somewhere, somehow, I would find the answer to it.  Someday I would know.

That Day came.  At its close I pulled "The Lonely Limb" from its hiding place, and near the bottom of its last page I wrote again my query: "Where Is Everyone?".  And next to that, neatly typed, I put my discovery: "Out on a limb‑-thinking."

But if that's true, why then, "The Lonely Limb" is funny after all.