A.
The heat bore down and
the
city staggered and I was glad.
It
was something to feel in the
bones,
to push our limits, to
equalize.
To touch your skin,
somewhere
in this city.
B.
I have nothing left but half-formed
questions
at the end of each night. Beginning
with
what—the needle or the plough? Half-
played
actions—to winnow or to fray? What
is
creation, if not the movements of
molecules
that keep our blood from
freezing
over as we sleep?
Selah.
A.
You never stop. You sing it again.
And
again. The ocean follows your pull
and
yet the land is never flooded; you move
back
and then forward and always back
and
so forth; you never stop and so
I
am pulled, too. With a body of
water
always between us.
B.
You said I wasn’t dead, only
sleeping.
But I was tangled in a maze
and
jumping from story to story with
no
body of my own. You said that
the
mourners should be silent, but
the
quiet that moved with the speed
of
lava from your words snatched
the
breath of every thought from
the
middle of my gut. If I am alive,
I
am speechless and unable to explain.
Selah.
A.
Truly: did you see me? Did you read the
blank
pages concealed in the book around my
neck?
That must be why I became a ghost
thereafter,
nameless and conjured only
in
tales told around the fire. If only you’d
flipped
the pages in the opposite direction.
You
never would’ve been content
with
a simple haunting.
B.
The shadow of your wing,
wild
goose, is a refuge of weather
without
rules. And so I am comforted
without
knowledge by bone-crushing
thunder
and left weeping under a
perfect
circle of rainbow. If
I
am covered, which I am,
the
wind rushing at my bare skin
is
nothing but a cloak.
Selah.
A.
I dare you. At the edge of
the
woods. But that is all, and I am
left
running in the silence of shifting
dimensions,
having never been followed
there before.
All must find that seam
between
times by their own search.
Only
comets brush my side; only
stars
say my name.
B.
This light at the summit: I recognize
its
shape, its temperature, even at this
distance.
Old love, I never stop fitting
my
hands and feet into these crevices I know
you
carved before the beginning of the
world
to bear me upward. I forget the blood
seeping
from these jagged wounds whenever
I
hear the air flying up to meet you.
Selah.
A.
To travel yet never go outside—may this
blind
fate never reach you. You have no idea
how
many enemies pursue you. And so this is
how
you climb through the bars on the
window, this is how you
climb the ladder to the roof. I want to show you the side
of
the cliff where you can see them coming, where you
draw
the velocity of every wave into a song you’ll
hurl
at each one before it sinks its teeth into your sleep.
I leave you with this: May beauty shock your eyes
open,
simple as that.
Selah.
C.
What happens if this shape is moving
unseen
up the other side? Will we burn to ash and
spirit
when we reach the edge of the stone altar at the
top?
Or see the continents rolled out before us, see
the
world for the first time? In truth: I have assumed
I
climb alone. In truth: I still assume. In truth: I know
nothing
but the pull of every muscle moving upward, the
pull
of some hidden magnet pulsing through the mountain,
the
pull of light, the pull of light.
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