Navel


From the very center of all things, the truth out of darkness like a rainsoaked gravel road or a tube folded over on itself with uncanny consistency.

Glittering in the headlights, the enormous eyes of an impossible animal, the very omphalos of indeterminate yearning; we want something always to be said, like our names softly in candlelit rooms, curtains wavering in the sound of our own vices, whispering up the staircase of love: the tryst of leaves in memory's wake, or I saw it in the backseat like a dream-image tattooed with shadows of rain.

And so into it all we were born, regardless of any explicit request for abnegation or anonymity.

We sing to one another with mournful exuberance.

The radio-play is subsumed in our directionless song; we know not which way to turn.

Light dapples the scrim of a mirror's lake.

Together we layered out the car, our clothes, and underwater.