What blots out its name to carry on with you?
I meant to make amends with her. For her.
Yes, pen, I want to remember. No less or more than myself.
What comes drifting to stand soul and clear?
They say I have or had a self.
Yes, pen, I believed them.
Yes, pen. When I said believed I meant I tried.
I mean I meant to try. To believe them.
About this they would call self, but something resisted.
Pen, do you think that resistance might be a sort of self?
What breath rose from here?
No, pen, I cannot point to her. I cannot tell you where she is.
But here, I think, yes.
What could we make and know as well as any name?
I meant to offer her up to you and you could trace her, bless her in this basement altar.
I meant to descend low enough through caves and cellars to find.
Her, or the altar, or you.
That we could meet.
The first two questions are adapted from lines by Paul Celan.
