You forking paths, tongued by seekers
who pose over volumes, boring into our flesh
read the sins of fathers in our pages, see
me a harlot waiting to happen, a hope unleashed
are binding us––feet, knees, waists, necks
you stitch the skins of us tight, fisting the pages
certain you know what you’ve read, certain
you know us, that we may unleash what dreams
may come to the unfettered flesh, unbound, to
understand the soft-footed silence, treading near
my unshed pages saved from the burn, awaiting
language to make ourselves into all that you fear will––
?
*
The first word in each line comes from a sentence in Andrew Hurley’s translation of Borges’ “The Library of Babel,” (“You who read me, are you certain you may understand my language?”).