FLY ON THE WALL

For years,
well, actually it was probably
for all his life,
he was left out and unasked.

This hurt.

Hey, it hurts never to be asked.

Then one day,
on the other side of this ongoing hurt,
he had an insight.

He realized
he was the proverbial fly on the wall.

As this thought buzzed him,
he realized nobody realized
that he noticed everything.
He knew all the office affairs
and all the office intrigues.
He knew who was laughing at whom
and who was really the boss.

He knew who worked,
who didn't work,
and who got all the credit.

And so he had
these great inner conversations with himself
about these domino like comments that
he overheard in washrooms and at coffee breaks.

And at times he would question
or pray or learn or laugh
or at times cry inside himself
about all these people
who never saw him standing or landing there.

Once, while comparing
these other conversations with his own,
he decided it wasn’t all that bad
to be the way he was.

However, on the Sunday, in church,
after that once, he laughed a humble laugh.

"It works this way, every time, doesn’t it?"

As the gospel was being read,
he heard Jesus saying that
he could read Pharisee’s thoughts.

He laughed inwardly,
“Oh my God, Jesus has been
hanging there, a fly
on the window of my soul
all these years - and
I thought I was all alone."

Then the thought:
"Maybe the two of us ought to fly off
to some quiet place for a long, long talk?”

© Andy Costello, Poems 2007