Along the dusted edges
of a world unknown
bodies trailing by
I walk as though a secret
as though a memory
an ivory mist between the fingers
a dream of a time to come
not promised, not spoken of.
We hold onto hope the way we bow our bright eyes into the fog, made in the image of ghosts, made of wisps of fading photograph delirium, the glow at the tips of fireflies against water in the dark. Reflections. Illusions. For everything we hold we wish were something else.
If we are not lovers, if we are not bound together by vein or tongue or country, if our visions eclipse each other but do not touch, then let the world be brought into eternal solitude, let the earth beneath my grass wet feet weep only to be alone. There is something here we refuse to see. Something intelligent, calling to us with its mouth, a wide gray ocean, fingers tearing open knees, rain pricks stiff along the neck beneath the trees.
And we drift, we are adrift, we grasp for what we cannot believe only to fall again upon ourselves. This is me against me. This is you against you, and every mirror is another hall. The rolling thunder of this bone longing, this desperation. Press your palms to mine, I can feel your heart bleeding into time. And as the sun turns down her body to blue sing the mountains to sleep, I am a wanderer inside for the way we do not see. A vessel for the silence crawling along the seams.
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Allison Marie Conway 