“But I never cry out in my sleep.

When dreaming of my own death, I fall silent”.

—Seema Reza, Belemnite

The thing—

the thing without
form

dissolving like vapour once
you try to shape words around it.

In silence,
it begins in the torso,
blooming upward into the chest cavity

finally flinging itself
like a pale, sweating arm
into the left corner of your brain
thrumming and taking up residence there
like a tiny heart.

It comes without a name
—a metaphor for itself

The way the gaping wound of an open night sky refuses to fit into a (single) mouth.