Even if I understood what the teachers said,
that my desire was a thirst
for something beyond forms,
I believed I would be incomplete
if I did not know longing;
I would miss nothing,
wanted to be marked by the passage,
wanted to be inscribed.
And then I was given the key
to a wanting that won’t stop as long as I live.
Where was my gracious consent to attachment then?
I was taught to say, Please, Sir,
may I have more? Taught by craving, by the roar
in the blood rising without volition,
no place to stand that did not lean
forward, no still point. I harrowed sleep
and memory, descended into
the purely physical howl of the world,
learned my size in relation to appetite,
from which I could no more step back
than I could change the eyes
through which I read this page.
When I’m gone, will I stop wanting?
Perhaps this is also a form of immortality:
submission to a craving without boundary.
To be ravenous, and lack a mouth.