There was nothing left to send you, so I fashioned this from smoke

and hair, from the remains of the day as they were handed to me by

others, by those who lost their tongues and those who forgot how to

speak. It was the beginning of winter or the end of fall, it was dawn or

dusk, it was yes I am here, and no I am not.

Your words (are they yours or are they what I heard after you stopped

speaking?) continue to ring inside the well, the column of cold air we

sank into the earth.

You are neither as big as you claim to be, nor as small as I said you

are.  I was remembering the size of your words when you said this,

when you repeated them in a soft voice, the one you used to use just

before you turned on the yellow light. You were standing with your

back to me, talking about the buttons you would need to fix the shirt

or blouse, the color of his hair when he was a puppy, the way water

tasted after you came out of the jungle, down from the mountains.

The radio is playing our song, you said, the one that brought us here,

Inside of, then outside.  Always these two places, no window or wall

between them. You could get to think, you could begin, somewhere

you do, but not here, not in this place you are inside of, the outside

here too.

Pees or please, sees or flees. You as the object, the one whose mouth

tries to empty itself of the words leading to your shadow.

We were talking about international terrorism, about the voices one

hears in airports, about the weather and how it effects our choice of

colors, about why it is necessary to let some people starve and others

grow fat.

Or is it just the one who says: blaze and pant. Or the one who

whispers: they have human feet and wear helmets shaped like stars,

like units of sound locked inside a music box. Or is it the one who

points to the pieces of rope dangling from our waists, their lengths

determined by the weight of greed each of us caries beneath our

tongues. Or is it the one who writes: He must have mounted a camera

in his mouth, he must have known I had fished him in the car.