before dawn
so often these are opposite to fixing
a way of saying, i will meet you
in the land of grief that we may
put hands in that soil together
& look around
& tend to what grows & also dies
especially the underground
invisibles
while others announce
their comings & goings
with great fanfare between
stints of weeping into the
pools of their own reflections
where meanwhile
we know life here & death
& stay with the work
to make it good.
a stitch in this time
To knit, note by molecular note, one letter at a time, some continuity against the chill of constant fracture. An act of resistance, to mend the minor acts of a given day to the chorus of befores and yet-may-comes.
or extinction
Imagine irrevocable rights.
To live and move.
That these might be held.
Sacred and constant.
Instead of the constant
threat of nothingness.
Cyclic repairs
Because you can only hold that mouthful of silence for so long until it guesses you empty of time and the breath comes loose where the reins give way, let the eyes finally mute their speech to find what drifts downlight to arrive along the banks. Claw nearer to some jagged edge and hold.
On wants
Cushion the head
when it is too tired to lift
and stitch the shadow back
to her source.
The weight of being
. . . Okay, but here is a warning. I am no machine, so you will not make me faster or more efficient by dismantling my parts and addressing them one at a time. I will not be fixed. Repair, on the other hand, is a process I welcome. Now I am seas against shores and now I am a single battered rock and next thing you know I will be washed up, waiting, smooth and gleaming at a shore, unnoticed tide after tide until one day there is someone walking low to the ground on uncertain feet to find the wonder of the moment, the smooth weight of so much wear, round and solid in her toddler’s hand.
From past, until––
Sing in us a song to unwrite what has been overwrought onto the bodies of earthly creatures, their backs and faces, beds and nests, limbs and soils, eyes and the marrow of mountains, each vessel to overflow with what floods between seen and unseen, light to lift the lies from torn pages of official record. Resound.
Best done in darkness.
Considering the challenge of writing among the dead; the fabrics connecting blood and screens to war machines, it can be helpful to keep attention in the unlit regions. This is why I prefer the dark corners, the spaces where all I can do with language is acknowledge its opacity, and all I can do with looking is notice the limits of sight. So much of what passes for light is blinding. I am suspicious of acts of solving and fixing, when applied to the living. I can’t fix anything, have no solutions, and prefer not to be distracted from the living by any more offers from those that claim they do. Leave me to the tender work of mending instead.
