3 fragments for a language i am learning to speak.

-if it were said-

would we step outside of history
outside of language

would our whispers deliver us
from this attempt to articulate
what only exists beyond [this].

i wanted to tell you
i had been living off that conversation
for a week

but…listen

is the only word i still know how to say.

***

there are little black stools
scattered around this room
like cockroach carcasses

we sit on them and listen
to chinese poetry

the sound of those vowels
makes us ashamed of what we will never know.

***

staring at dirty dishes
the kitchen collapses

like an origami giant
folding over in the rain,

like a cancerous lung
drawing its last long
breath.

i would have washed the walls
of every room in this house

i would have been waiting here for you
with a scrubbing brush teeth gritted

deciding not to mention it.

(how could you have been here,

as you were

and now,
nothing.)