Fleeting Feelings

Found Poem from Extremely Loud & Incredible Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

I didn't believe in things that couldn't be observed. I believe that things are extremely complicated.
I felt that night, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone.
I invented. I invented. The more I found, the less I understood.

If life was worth all the work it took to live, what exactly made it worth it?
A friction began to arise between Nothing and Something. We got worse, surrounded by Nothing.
The world is so big and small, in the same moment we were close and far.
How could such a lonely person have been living so close to me my whole life?

But I knew in the most protected part of my heart, the truth. It's simple, like a mountain is simple.
I want you to be happy, I want that more than I want happiness for myself, does that sound simple?
Anyway.

I am leaving. I turned around and walked away, I didn't look back, I won't.
I am gone, I am no longer here.

But now I am alive and I can't stop thinking about how I hadn't noticed before, even though I was trying as hard as I could to notice everything:
I'm Happy! That whole time I was happy!
And I could not believe I laughed. I had everything.

And the mistakes I made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.
I'll never write another word again.

With Love, Your Father. 

Written on January 5, 2010  for an Independent Reading Found Poem assignment, for the book Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer