Twenty6

Twenty6

A to Z. All of them.
The let­ters in my words drift away, unmoored,
torn away, taken down, by a rip cur­rent. I have twenty6 to work in to some­thing to say,
but they, like me,
are em ty. The words are full of nothing.

Every­thing I say needs these lost twenty6, and they are gone, and I am mute.
I am look­ing at us look­ing at one another. We are won­der­ing if we are of the
same stuff.
We are. All of us. It’s ter­ri­fy­ing and we cling to one another and all we are is not all we are, some­how.
Take a pic­ture of me twice. I am the dark and the light.

I am the empty gun falling to the ground; I am the cas­ing bounc­ing. I am the locked door in an ele­men­tary school. (When did that hap­pen? My school was as open as the wind.) I am the child’s hand on my classmate’s shoul­der, fol­low­ing her to the woods away from the school. I am the eter­nal mem­ory of her shoul­der and my sweaty palm clutch­ing her and feel­ing of her lit­tle per­fect dress.

I am the old man now look­ing at my hands and the odd­ness of this life and I really have not a word to say.