nihil ex nihilo

I remember moments suspended in grief like the noose in my groom’s garden it swayed back and forth like wheat, remember? and mother knew my name, and winter would come common as anything else fevers pitch few blacklakes and I am too cold now for grieving

of sorrow, dwelling, cold as soil O, to confine it, to let it foul around the rind before it is consumed -night riches, kings die, and there is no assurance - you will only know what matters when it is under threat & no hour is enough for misery

otherworldwise memory grows fat and false as stomach or mirrors we look into darkly before hurrying away

I am selfsame, cowrie-smooth I have blanched below both starry hand & handsome moon and for nothing! oh, horror in seeing one’s life laid out flat like this. I turn from the accumulated moments. May they mean as little to me as I to that doom organ where dread resides! Throat! Paw! Sternum! Where does shame hide in the body? I root her out like a mandrake from soil I will burn her here and right now. Harken this wonderful screeching. I cut flowers to go with her Into the fire. And these wounds where her absence marks me? What does one do with this? And all of this loss. No, I turn again - burn it all! I want not anything of me that once was. Sick, sick, sick. And I am not sick anymore.

behold, all my imperfections - I’ve lost a dozen sunrises, made amends in waters too muddy - I have forgiven when I should not have - been intoxicated with vice, with isolation, with my own suffering - I have resented those unaware of my silent carrying - I have surrendered the chisel’s clarity in lieu of sweet illusion - I have given up, remained seated, hidden away in my house, I have stopped eating, responding to friends, I have hated myself so deeply I could not look out from my own eyes - I have let my garden die out, and failed to manage its resurrection - I have gone silent, fixed as a statue beneath the heavy dome of an old church - I have let dust coat everything, I have forsaken language, I have succumbed to the aches and wounds of the body - I have come home to myself - behold me -