shapes and spells

Starting out I didn’t know

saying what I meant 

meant that you wouldn’t understand,

I weighed my words, left them

hanging off of line breaks

falling and fading before

they let a sentence form. I wrote 

all the parts, where you

touched me, what I took.

I never had anything to say;

I still don’t— litany and lament 

and punctuation jokes,

apostrophe and poesy, the tumble 

between bone and inkling and

creation, the gaffed dharma of

I’ll get you when you’re dead

played out in this press of dread,

crumbling books and diaspora flesh,

this wandering between incarnations,

another inhabitant of the dust

cast about in the brushstrokes and

dark wards of this incessant sweeping,

the sand gathered, shapes and spells

painting the mandala, these words

assembling stacks and selves—

crumpled letters, crowded shelves,

your picture in a frame

the moment ever after as

the bardo holds its breath.