“…because even the soul is a creature…”
– Meister Eckhart
you’re here,
telling me how
a disease survives
in saliva & blood & water
& it’s swift mutation
to rancid wine in
cursed wine hide-
common-wells where
each of us enters
a soft drowning. i
drive my four-wheel
leviathan west on sunset
toward nuclear tide
& stop at an end.
your cigarette blues
with formaldehyde,
flame retardant & hand
cleaner. “is radiation
coming across
this sea?” she exhales.
a dissonance reborn
in the back of her throat
we exchange dry bones
whittled to tuning rods
& stuff them with marrow.
tomorrow, she widens
her thighs &
dreams, “here’s a chain-
mail hood my brother
left.” rusted, but
stronger with redox
from some crusade
“it was his
forced oxidation,
bringing him closer
to sublime ecdysis.”
he died suffocating
and alone before
this new disease
suffocates alone
we sew each other’s
bones to our own
& pray the graft takes.
while we wait
i read, burning
in white text on night
-rich sheet,
annotation resistant:
she says she thinks
we’re all segments
of a Whole re-
arranged to near
-infinity to forget
each other’s face &
she’s right, there’s
only suffering to hold
us together.
& forgetting.
Image: “Day 053” by Holly Lay, licensed under CC 2.0.
- with what letters remain - June 18, 2021