Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Fading by Ayla Rogers

Fading by Ayla Rogers


I’ve heard it often without listening
Repeated it as original work
As though I’ve never heard your voice aloud
Words ring hollow when you, my dear, depart

The echo, trying to kiss me goodnight
Evokes the sweetest of apologies
Somewhere far beyond my comprehension
Where only the inert can make a home

Leave me a sure impression of your form
Indentations in the sheets will suffice
For now it’s only wrinkles in my brow
Like places you touched, they refused to move
Like these medicated eyes do the same
When they rest from rolling back in my head

I wonder when and whether I will wake
And how much older you would look by then
If I can remember a face I knew
Or if I’ll recognize the dialogue
From all the nights spent talking in my sleep

Your lungs accept one last inhalation
How long will you live if you hold them in?
Let them live on in me while you can’t be
Every line from your lips I had written
Each noise you made in the dark, inside me
Pure bliss in the dullest of delusions

The last thing I swear I heard before dawn
A fading song on infinite repeat
A sound I echo mostly to myself
It’s in the dim recesses of my skull
That I couldn’t tell your last breath from mine

                                                                                                                                                 

Echo
In memoriam Emily Dickinson

It would not sound so deep
Were it a Firmamental Product—
Airs no Oceans keep—


Afloat between your lens
and your gaze,
the last consideration to go
across my gray matter
and its salubrious
deliquescence
is
whether or not I'll swim,
whether I'll be able to breathe,
whether I'll live as before.
I'm caught in the bubble
of your breath.
It locks me in.
Drives me mad.
Confined to speak alone,
I talk and listen,
question and answer myself.
I hum, I think I sing,
I breathe in, breathe in and don't explode.
I'm no one.
Behind the wall
of hydrogen and oxygen,
very clear, almost illuminated,
you allow me to think
that the Root of the Wind is Water
and the atmosphere
smells of salt and microbes and intimacy.
And in that instant comes
the low echo
of a beyond beyond,
a language archaic and soaked
in syllables and accents suited
for re-de-trans-forming,
bringing light
which brings out
melanin
from beneath another skin:
the hollow of a voice
which speaks alone.




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