more than anything,
to see inside yourself.
But your soul
has been shaped by decades
of obscurity and remoteness,
by its desire for tight junctions,
and its fetishes
for rigor.
In fact, it compels you too
to be desolate
and stiff,
bidding you to insist
on silence
in the library,
and coercing you to stick
to reading
classic Russian literature.
The only way
for you to get
a sense of its dimensions
is to treat it rough, abuse it,
call it stupid now and then.
Only then,
when it swells up,
reddens, and begins
to accuse you—
as long as you're quick
and surreptitious
and discreet,
and as long as you can resist
paying heed
to its admonitions—
can you possibly hope
to randomly glimpse its
offended silhouette.
