To Give Away

The right breath is everything. You put your hand in front of your face and you run the programs back again, looking for “azure,” or some other more-than-nothing word. You collect time in a bucket and chill. You wish away the slop, the lamps, and even the bulbs they held. You try to eliminate articles, pronouns, whatever might have been in between you and that thundering quiet. Your hands wait to hold each other. This is all a lonely enterprise that you feel clear enough to wait for, from a distance. This might be—dare you think it—the idea. No. It’s gone, and you with it. You thought for a moment but you had to give that away. Say goodbye like a passenger on a ship. Wave with a silk scarf: a scarlet or an azure scarf. That’s it. It’s gone now. So sit and be refreshed. You don’t have to think. You can eat or just watch the screens that make up your life now. Don’t fret over any of this. You have the confidence of your soft carpet, grey and unobtrusive. It has learned you and you can sit. It has veered back from somewhere: your sense that something should be done? No, that was gone from the day you chose to lie down and just watch the river of huddled people flow by, their dumb belongings strewn across the fields, under an azure sky.