In this context
I have killed someone
I have never met
within a context in which
I have killed someone
I have loved. 

Within this space
I must arrange
order to damage
my guilt. 

In this context
I am given another
much narrower space
with which to contend. 

Within this space
a body addresses me
by means of unseen mechanics— 

Remember, it says, though
referencing something else,
something I have read, me. 

Within this narrative
loneliness is expressed
as a knife
or myopically sketched face. 

The reader is to discern
from patterns of facts
flashes of light
which are representations. 

Left with unlit facts receding
into a darkened pool of fragments,
the reader is to make a choice. 

The decision must be
envisioned
as a latch
which can be opened
or left untouched.  If opened, 

the latch will cease
to perform a function,
though this will have no
visible or invisible
effect upon anything else.  

If left untouched, the latch
will continue to hold fast
some sort of assumed opening. 

It is beautiful to make a choice, 

and the dutiful reader will
notice his or her own act of noticing
throughout the entire process
of constructing a narrative 

while foregrounding a latch
against the backdrop
of a mystery.  

In this space of time
I will have
slipped into
another room
despite the absence
of the possibility
of space in which
one could imagine
a room existing. 

There will be light
on my hands
to indicate
my hands have
extracted all of my teeth 

which have been placed
in the mouth of a dead man
who will walk
to the harbor
and barter them for rain.

mark stricker