
Figure
You’d like to do more than map the space
you take up. Naming the pathways, the synapses,
drawing out the shapes of things as if this is
command over them - it’s not. Walking around
like a clenched fist would you unfurl, fern-like,
if approached by the right syntax? Describe all
the intricacies like tracing the lace of a tablecloth
spread out under a wide light. In a white
afternoon she asked you to scratch the wax
off old pearls, clean the studs in silver-dip.
You were stunned, moved, and had nothing at all
to say about it.