Hi, my name is George Watsky.  I'm a poet and musician originally from San Francisco, California, and today I'm going to be reading a beautiful poem called "Selves" written by Yukta Bajracharya from her collection, Covering Up My Cold Feet.  It's a chapbook of hers and I met Yukta in Kathmandu, originally through a friend of mine named Sarah Kay who is also a poet and I was drawn to this poem and a lot of her work because I really love the idea of a person having a lot of different people inside them, us being complex and the ability on any given day to lean towards a different part of our persona and different events can draw those things out.  I don't pretend to know exactly why she wrote this piece but I know why I relate to it is because I think that it's really popular these days to view things in absolutes, to eschew the grey areas in terms of things that are more concrete and more comforting but I think that having the ability to see yourselves as complex and multifaceted is really powerful.

"Selves"
by Yukta Bajracharya

one walks
trying not to stumble

two smiles
trying not to crumble

three talks
with words that feel shallow

four focuses
in the present, trying not to feel hollow

five lives
drawing every breath it can

six seven eight a ton
the replication goes on and on

I lay there motionless
right where you left me
in that old bed
with a warm kiss on my forehead