Reticent as Ever, I Follow the Map
This old bed, knowing our secrets, our love
for the spiders of the world and their guilty
pleasures, wraps its history around us, says
“go easy, my friends,” and leaves us to our
research. I find the scar on your lower
back, that sacred heart of fusion,
trace the line on the map to the freckle
of grace and its inequities, then up to the left
ear, which requires attention. Speech
can only intrude upon my navigations,
yet I can’t refrain from murmuring the words
again, those never-tiring, never-depleting
syllables which always demand repetition,
wave after wave, an ocean of truth,
mingling and dispersing, accepting, giving,
swelling larger and more complex each day.
“Reticent as Ever I Follow the Map” was published in July 2019 at OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters. Thank you, Jeff Streeby, for taking this piece.