if the theatre breathes like a rancid lung
   it must exhale into the rafters;
ledger-scent and sour of iron...y,
  and hours congealed into one bleak bruise.

then it must be that only (i) inherit a vessel
as one inherits a house wrecked by fire:
   walls still too warm with other lives,
wallpaper peeled into letters that spell me.
   never (my) name.

heart-beat / heart • skip
(these syllables only ever tally debts.)

    (my) palms are tax-collectors with gloves far too soft to grasp mercy.
    (my) ribs are two little vaults where accusations slumber.
    and there are ceaseless receipts folded inside the sole of (my) shoe.

evenings most beautiful
  with rain pouring down their face,
have stopped pooling and now,

   they sediment, layer upon layer...
in the strata of one’s rues,
  as ossified bulwarks for crimes (i) never learned.

a braided tongue of smoke
   knots through (my) chest,
insisting on words (i) never even conceived,
       sighing a confession to a jury of
absent eyes.

  they led me to the scaffold
palisaded oak, blade polished to a sunless gleam,
and the (crowd), silent as those ledge
pages,
      watched
as i was sentenced for the mere act of knowing.

and even as the head fell,
       i felt the phonetics of my existence
spill like tarnished coins across the wet cobblestones,
  and the (spectators), formless and meticulous,
  gathered them as though i were (theirs).