i don't know what to do with my hands even
when they're holding yours. then imagine this.
when i first entered i remembered the bojack bit:
i see you: ICU. i tried to watch it years ago but
couldn't get past the first episode. last night we
finished the last season, adding to the aftermath
of light. take another look: the only difference
between song and silence is who gets to swallow
the words.
*
if i'm really an artist why can't i draw blood.
all my first drafts—mixed with varnish, arson,
and structures of feeling—smell like mogras
crushed on bus seats. maybe i'm not an artist.
maybe i'm an orbit in search of a center that
cannot hold me like you do. is there an animal
that runs away from the scent of mogras. home
is where it is. i'd like it to invite me like dignity
invites violence.
*
i was always reading in the genre of the nightlight
because i'd knocked the living daylights out of me.
with the blackred i borrowed from the burning well
i strikethrough your body: a mazemap where i hunt
hurt that scurry in little lumps until they're caught
and crossed out at the morgenstern pit of your ache.
i read you, verso to recto, do you copy me. we may
mean well when we say poets but all we mean are
scribes disillusioned with illumination.
*
i'm well versed in blank but when your eyes were
finally blank enough i didn't have a pen or the will
to write on it. but you must have seen the floating
signatures of my fingers aswirl in the sky between
your skin and your flight. you're well versed in storms
to know this one said: go all the way or come back
completely.
*
that night i was a moving finger keeping the score
printed on a torpedo. it sung of an image i'd see later
in the ICU: a stag leaking out of you with crayon antlers
and graphite eyes. after shifting to the room i went out
to get you idli and watermelon juice crossing roads
through a drizzle of pink-and-yellow pamphlets
curled like an umbrella in repulsion from the lashes
of wind wondering whether a hardcover of my heart
could ever break even.
*
at the litfest we rushed from stall to stall browsing
through blurbs and pricetags with the shards of our
phones. i search you for signs of scorched earth but
find only sheafs of tracing paper herded by the wind.
they turn white wherever they meet. they let in light
like i let you let me in: just another wind.
*
we've lost so many colors to a long day of unrestrained
eyes. i don't want to lose any more. can i survive
the skidrow of cadence with nothing but a petition
to let you cascade into me. when you haul me up
with a poem what buckles underfoot is gravity.
you are the manjha between the loss of the poem
and the lost poet. i come in your way and become
a runway.
*
i splattered on the freehand city. your finishing
touch reminds me that legends stick to the corners
of the maps. everyone's gathered here. i don't know
what's the issue except it's the final one. half of it is
acknowledgements and the other half is apologies.
it doesn't sell a single copy (i read you, do you copy?)
but it's okay, it doesn't want to reach unmeant hands.
i don't know what to do with my hands to make them
mean something.
~ ajay
1/10/2024
