At the End of the Alphabet
for Thom Cooney Crawford
Books bloated and fanned
open in the flames.
One book was saved.
We opened the book to a gust of smoke
dim as memory.
We were at the end of the alphabet
among the five invisible letters.
Each letter stood for a particular silence.
The crossbar of the last letter was beginning to emerge.
Sappho with one hand over her eyes.
***
All along my skin
fires were set.
From a distance the smoke
looked like fog
rising off the ocean in the cool morning.
I wasn’t an ocean.
I was a horizon.
Even fire couldn’t tame me.
***
At the corridor’s end: brilliance.
I was hardly able to feel the ground under my feet.
Although I followed you
you were shrinking,
and then the light was larger,
and my eyes hurt.
You were headed toward—
not a door
or fire or sky.
It was horrible.
I would wither in captivity.
You turned back.
For my sake.
You were my sacrifice.
***
I have a secret fear.
If I told my fear
my fear would deepen,
buried the more it’s held to the light.
I strayed so far
I stayed in the same place.
With every wonder of the world.
Then, accidentally,
a hand in the dark
brushed against my hair.
And for that I was
lost for years.
***
The wind that spreads fires
was the first of what we called the gods.
My eyes sting
from staring into the wind.
***
He was there to help me,
walking among the others.
I’d fallen and he reached down to draw me to my feet.
He wasn’t human.
I can’t shed my own skin he said
because I am your skin now.
He was with me even
when I was a girl
unable to see the
chalkboard from the front row.
An old chalkboard in an abandoned school room,
white shadows for lessons.
