It was as though your tongue and lips were the footmen,
as though they’d come in and slipped right back out
to return much later with tokens of yourself –
tokens that might help you if you needed the help
to remember your worthy purposes,
to forget the itch you couldn’t reach on your back,
to figure out how and when you had gotten stuck
and whether the needle had frozen in
the center or along the cold periphery.
These questions you had formulated long ago
but strained to hear the answers just now in
voices that lurked behind your ostensible speech.
You found that each time you opened your mouth it was
like an impromptu angelology
in which you named them and wondered which you could trust.
[Previous: Left with the Helves]
[Next: Your Timeless Riff]