revision April 27 2001
Recrudescence
(Recrudesce: to break out
again after lying latent or relatively inactive)
My friend,
There are doors which even you and I
have never opened. Shut for so many
years I am slammed back against
the sink of meditation.
Drawers unopened, their loneliness
stuck shut, slipped behind hinges.
Whole cabinets of dust. I wore many
selves. Stains hang here so far
removed from conversation
as to be little calciums. Calculi.
I rattle with little bones.
But since you ask….
Viz.:
When the gun was pressed against
my head I sat more still than a
fig on a summer tree, more breathless
than a whisper, more quiet than the
center of that fruit, It’s stem
my hair, I felt it's roots
take. I was sixteen.
I always wondered if the red dye
of my fear rubbed off on him.
He was silent, his face the only light
in the room, the phosphorescence of
madness. He couldn't find
me I guess, inside my aubergine
stillness.
He was a steel shaft in
his hand. At last he slipped
to the door.
In the end, unbreathing,
I saved him.
Ego te absolvo.
I was so afraid he wouldn't
like me anymore.