I found a phrase to catch the steel—
some flint to scrape the lock
of tongue against the cold and rot.
Nobody tells you that your sunglasses will fog up—that the heat from your eyes will vaporize and blind you, and force you, after too long, to shed the shield, and feel it: the air rushing across your ears, the sun refracting through streaked saltwater, the impression of a hole marked for digging in the base of your throat.
Faintly, an animate clack
in the Boneyard of the Inchoate
rustles the windowpanes.
It feels near, tumbling between terrible purpose and resplendence.
One of those faces, it'll be stuck with eventually.
Or, it will stunt in the fog and never find form.
From the house, this seems the outcome to avoid.
I found a phrase to catch the steel—
some flint to scrape the lock
of tongue against the cold and rot.
