A view from outside

Sometimes, I stand naked in front of a mirror

Evaluating

Not the paunch or the flab or the dimples (of which there are many)

But to gaze in wonder at how everything looks unchanged.

Like a cosmonaut suspended in space

Observing Earth’s serene stillness

And thinking the world must always be this constant, from here.

This is me, gaining distance from myself.

Grappling with the idea that surface level

Isn’t the whole story.

That what I see while suspended in space

Isn’t all there is.

That underground volcanoes never cease

Creating silent scars in a once placid body.