If you go back
do not suffer
the space between.
Do not suffer
the reckless judgment
in the space between.
Beware.
There was no present
no present between
no present anywhere.
There was no sense
no right response
no haven to be had.
Do not worry.
You will never know
about it—the space
between radiance and insanity—not ever.
Sacrificed
between sound and affinity
it has nothing to do
with you or you
or those poems
you would never understand.
Explaining them, she will not claim
the air—do you believe?
Even if you ask,
she will not tell you about it:
it does not speak, walk, stand, sit
or eat anymore.
It does not exist, anymore, but
if it did, would it still appear as stone
or truth?
Listen, the sound moves from one spine
to the other.
Listen, the paths cross ten thousand miles
up the road.
Listen, the scribbles curve at the beginning
and end, loving you immediately,
loving narcissistically
what she suspected and never
knew. Nevertheless, she will not explain
to you the space
between radiance and insanity,
those poems you will never understand:
their codes, signals, the enigma
of betrayal. Since you are a man,
She will not assume
you do not want her
to explain.
She will not assume that
at all. But
being the man you are, and a man
among men, this man and that one—
that one who wears those coded clothes—
that one who utters syllables of chaos—
that one who sprawls across the horizon
of sunsets—
you would know him if you saw him
living now,
replete with vowels and space and right action.
Take a moment.
Try. Try. Try to hear him—
his footsteps across glass:
his specific insanity:
his wrong perception:
his right admission.
If you will hear him,
reach inside his coat of musk
and pull. Yes, pull on his organs—
the vital ones—the ones above
the belt—that one—his heart
and yes—the other one—his lungs breathing
pebbled memories of it:
not knowing why.
Why he believed
believing even
his perception of lies.
Oh, if he had never tempted the fantasy
of hot oil, the thing-in-itself,
would he have smelled the sizzling
tempura on
the other side of the wall,
excused himself and sat down beside
the dinner
laid out for him?
Forgive her.
She has gotten carried away
recreating the real motive
of those poems
you would never understand—
those concealed poems of images
like wet clothes hanging
on a clothesline behind
a brick rowhouse in the city
somewhere
under sunlight
those clothes
each image
each shred of cloth
each skein of memory
waiting to dry. If only
she had felt
the key in her hand
the effortless intuition of space
between radiance and insanity
to change it
to back it up
before the reel
got stuck.
Do not worry.
She will never explain what
no longer needs
explaining. The sunset vanishes
long before
she wrote those poems
you would never understand.
Originally published in Guillinna on Four Wheels by Sandra Squire Fluck. Available on Apple Books and Amazon Kindle.
