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we couldn’t put
it back together
with time
or even with
words
everything you thought
at that moment
was somehow
interrupted
like data flows
or the way frames of film
fit together to make movement.
i think they call it
‘the persistence of vision’,
each moment
blurring
into the last.
we wrote with pencil
on sound
and i said things
aloud
that i wouldn’t even think
the quickest way to remember
is to try and forget
you had something
stuck in your front teeth -
to me this was a sign
i used a typewriter ribbon
as a blindfold
and pointed myself to the sun.
so much of
going away
is coming back
again.
we spent hours
tidying our house
until it no longer
felt like home.
we washed away hallways
and let the paint
fall from walls where we
found ourselves,
camped.
your voice &
my eyes open
waiting for the silence to stop.
i left the city early
and watched them roll the clocks back
to the start.
trains collapsed into houses
with the sound of sign language
& you, barely awake.
it all started
when i forgot your name.
we survived a room full of people
by ignoring each other
& waited so long
that it began to feel like action,
began to feel like memories eroding.
a simple virus,
leaving only an outline.
a hypodermic needle.
a man sleeping under a tree.
a tag cloud of memories
distributed in the mail.
there were weather patterns,
anatomical diagrams & other
continuations of science.
i held my breath & thought
of all the things
which are not quite photographs,
but always framed.
i read the first page
of fifteen different books
& then walked around the block
hoping to run into you.
i had so much
to talk about,
but nothing in particular
on my mind
a woman with a tribal tattoo
and a fedora hat
rode her bike past me
in the street
& all at once i understood
the meaning
of something you said to me
long ago:
only you
can bring
the stars down to earth.
