Thursday, March 24, 2022

PAS SEUL

An addict of experience 
always fiends 
for significance; 

she wants 
every gesture—needs it
to be special. 

If forced 
to stand outside 
the interpretive circle, 

she will struggle 
to understand 
its simplest implication;

but when driven 
to participate, 
the most byzantine ritual 

will snap to its 
grid and make 
unblemished sense. 

As if under hypnosis, 
she will dance 
the proscenium,

miming gifts of daffodils 
to imagined eye-
witnesses

and bending
to the floorboards 
with a slow somber dignity

to press her soft lips 
to the corpse 
of the past. 

For her, even the darkness 
which concludes 
the performance 

is considered to be both 
highly referential 
and important—

because, 
of course, it's 
the exact same dark 

which she felt so compelled 
to dispel 
at the start.