“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.