The camera shutter comes down on a selection
of Cappadoccia’s finest caves, as if to prove
the fact I’ve never been there. Whole empires
could balance upon your first tooth but this life
we have prepared for you will close more quickly
than it opens, no matter how much we love each other.
Living in a city networked by smog, I dreamed
of novellas set in Beijing where the dead
disappear into its future with each urban reinvention.
Can you distinguish reflection from light yet?
Afternoon sun catches on Mekong Delta brackish glass,
its waters thinning out up stream, one dam at a time.
One day when you are ready, I’ll tell you
about great migrations we have destroyed & marsupials
you’ll never meet, even as they ghost
across scrubland on the television screen. Folly
of the world’s mindless plunge into convenience;
detritus accumulates across the ocean in plastic rafts.
You’ll have to trust me: the index page is useless
without the body to sit before it. Afternoon: I open
the shutters on your latest sleep; overcast day slips in
& a hot westerly slaps windows in their frames
invoking another place, another time. Still-unspoken words
gather as you pull up to me on the bars of your cot.