quisling
“I initiated dialogue a thousand times. It is hopeless.
I prepare and accept myself
Flesh and spirit undone.”
I grow old through the words of others
Nobody speaks to me anymore
I am invisible in the taupe sands
Nipple to navel, burrowing in mud.
I once perceived language as a door
Held open by an archway of blossoms
Peaches and cream, granular
Seeds spitting silk in the rain.
It’s greedy to consume the young
(they say) scions tastes like leopards
Bristling against the tongue
Syllables tumbling as fallen temples.
Like the slick lungfish gliding beneath
Foam, my breath is trapped by the ocean
All elements are eroded by time. No
Song can coax the salt from my corpse.
Not even your voice brings me back
I long to hear the chime of each vowel
Consonants that are round and soft, leathery
Like hot milk poured over ice, crackled and stirred.
I listen to the waves rush inwards, sand castles
Collapse neatly as playing cards. Full House.
The King and Queen present the order
A story for the ones who lean in to listen.
The scrape of metal on stone is the anchor
It’s been dropped upside down, inverted:
Inertia, ineptitude, instigator, inevitable, inert
Shaped like an iliac crest only upside down.
It’s harder to hear with your eyes open
It’s harder to see with your ears open
The kids have closed their ears to widen
What they will see, and what they will not.
You don’t see me.
Will you can hear me instead?
Photo source.
