Breaking

I kissed the tellurian brow.

"I'm only Azhar," I remind myself. Refulgence is Pelagian. I scatter the dust, it's everywhere— the falsifier of dreams marring the peace of cinder.

And I fear the thought: with Sartre sedentarily, in oaklike silence. They say, "leave the sunlight." I can't. I can't go back 'through the conduit' and risk Pierian sickness— but it's no more than extracting olive from the shell. "Then forget tissues," I say. Forget the antra— too much nesting; too much entailing parentheticals.

Visages flip over centennially (what was I reading?). Dream or damage? The tip of graphite chips away, I stop writing. Regearing the triconsonantal roots on the tip of my tongue. This is the past— in the orange haze. But blue stasis parts the brume.

I'll remember the colors when I close my eyes (my Lord, I am falling ill, forgive me). This is: how I break from the short timber, eventually.