Echo

It would not sound so deep Were it a Firmamental Product— Airs no Oceans keep— —Emily Dickinson Afloat between your lens and your gaze, the last consideration to go across my gray matter and its salubrious deliquescence is whether or not I’ll swim, whether I’ll be able to breathe, whether I’ll live like before. I’m caught in the bubble of your breath. It locks me in. Drives me mad. Confined to speak alone, I talk and listen, ask questions and answer myself. I hum, I think I sing, I breathe in, breathe in and don’t explode. I’m no one. Behind the wall of hydrogen and oxygen, very clear, almost illuminated, you allow me to think that the Root of the Wind is Water and the atmosphere smells of salt and microbes and intimacy. And in that instant comes the low echo of a beyond beyond, a language archaic and soaked in syllables and accents suited for re-de-trans-forming, giving light, giving birth to melanin hidden within another skin: the hollow echo of the voice which speaks alone.