Stories

My dear friend
you are wrong to say
there are only stories.

Stories need bodies—
larynx, tongue and teeth
hands to scratch them down

tympany and thalamus
eyes to read
and bundles of neurons in the heart and gut.

Stories need bodies to devise them
bodies to receive them
and recognize.

I know words seem to run things,
that stories can control our lives.
But these things were only ever tools

So that one human body
could figure another one out,
could figure everything out.