the speed of light
Study for Approaching Zero
They took away my death. My life,
which should have been a corridor, became a maze
with my corpse hidden at its center. O corpse,
it was easier once. There was a promise,
or at least a reasonable assurance,
that you would become soil, and sprout
a spectrum of love-tokens after the rains.
This was the covenant, and it was enough
that we forgave the flood. But now the light is whiter,
colder. The icy halls reflect only themselves.
My government-issue thread is a placebo; it leads
to the surgeon, and he must know
his irrelevance. You can't imagine his lies—
that you have a bull's head, that your mouth
foams, that you are a shadow,
a walking negation. Fuck him, the propagandist.
He wants me to lose you. I know a bought man
when I see one.
In truth, I must be your shadow. For if
there is a light (and O
there is a light), then my breathing self
is necessarily its absence. You are the limit
that defines my arc, the distant shadowy planet
that perturbs my orbit. In some vanishingly far realm
my body is already yours, and only this ghost embrace
keeps them at bay—them with their clipboards and bloodhounds,
them with their rotted industry of life.
