Poem: What Once Seemed Real

What Once Seemed Real

was there, was visible
in colors crisp as cracker crust,
sat, hard in my hand
when I grasped it,
and I felt it  in my palm,
pressing into the fleshy mound
that meets my thumb.
I felt it then,
but now it is nothing,
is dust or air or the space
where dust and air might have been.
I thought it was,
but ny hand is empty;
was it always?

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