Dear reader, I’ve retreated too far into myself
And do not know how to get back.

The new world began with memory, a yolk ruptured
Before even the invention of sharpness, or other people.
It’s possible I willed their uninvention, and also possible
That I did not choose to be there alone, half-emaciated,
Dreaming of a time before mirrors. Don’t you remember?
We were in a dark room. There was a centre,
It was pulsing. I may as well have been part of it.
I may as well have been anything.

Dear reader, I don’t know what to think of the poem.
The essential never found me. Then I forgot.
So I traded in my hands for yours, and my eyes too.
And I opened my mouth.

Somewhere you are growing. I am somewhere else.
But in the underbelly we are children trading memories
Like funny-coloured rocks. Our house is being painted over.
What house? you ask, and its door collapses.
Outside, the world is turning into a helium balloon.
Everything that was ever done to me is being undone.

And I keep opening it.
And I move from the white window,
Into the doorless entrance where you are standing
In the corridor, the future flooding over your shoulders.
I take off my coats. You offer cake.
I take big, uncaring bites. Nothing has ever happened to me.
I’ve never chosen anything. I’ve never even said a word.