ARROW SHAVINGS

1.

I rest my hand on your head, bowed in prayer in stress, weeping, out here in never-after-never land, where listening alone kept life alive, welcoming in you my death, how I feel.

How could I have gone further with this enchantment? My connection to peers meant everything to me, who I held. But I was the least assured of them. I sat at the table, amazed by the lure of presence. I used my voice then, but couldn’t believe it. I gave myself to the common experiment, but nothing was proved. I had no place, will have no place, and no group of medics or magic men will ever come to resuscitate me. I say I, but am phantom. The future is for me because I’m absent from it. Because an experience “chose” me, writing the play I’m lost in (no one chose anything).

Thus I “am”: sky surface, leaves dancing, cars on the curb, trains panting. I am your anxiety and change.

To which no one answers. To which I respond. Gladly.

2.

I was going to write you your favorite poem, one you’d like and cherish, one to make you laugh crysmile.

Miles away eyes tick faster: trickle-down Heaven jimmied together with Hell phrase, no-going non-conceptual pithy blather, ironic stylings of beloved dooms. Oven of ash of bridegroom. Air, breathing room.

My project? To house an unsustainable architecture of ghosts, of sonic waves and orchids gasping (this last day of humanity, tomorrow the middle of the letter): take my hand.

3.

What did I see, you would say. Depraved appetites, overwrought lassitude, I’m falling in love with infinity’s abandoning me, where I began and ended, for the very first text that completed me, back then, is the final puzzle piece fit in for here. Picture a solid drab color making out with its life. My life, too, on cardboard.

4.

But then what is my condition of possibility, that smile, the notion of my grip? What is it that prevents me from remembering?

God is sadness, my chill.

Is… which is my answer, chasm, supplement, cancer. You saw it come back to me, riveted to my place. You saw my heart—in the space you offered it. Saw me laughing, under the canopy of unquotable graces. And were all the better for it: time displaced.

Here, you have my hand, take it.

5.

Such is why the voice cried long and after. Such is my Medusa-fantasy. Such is matter.

My experiment? No, my marathon rattle, my eye-standing, my tally center. I took it to that edge so I could cradle it and face you.

That grave was the starlight of my saving, that smile, the notion of my grip: ourselves, on the reverse of naming, in step with all there was to say and be. Silently.

I’m talking about my infancy, my lightwave contingency, my your health spree. I’m talking about the insistency of love.

6.

Small… like the back I rubbed or the breast I touched or the hand I clutched. Transparent body, in human offering, pure praise.

And I didn’t want it to end, but couldn’t stalk. Could only get stuck in your throat coughing trust. To be your outlier—your same.

An image: arrow shavings.