Your Name
after Kim So Wol
This is the grammar of breakage:
how a name becomes not-name, becomes air.
When fingers become leaves.
That moment of is, is not.
When flesh remembers it is flesh.
Then the vase. A shape for holding—
water, wine, oil. Or ashes.
Flowers reaching heaven.
Then falling.
Blood pools, recalling its vessel.
Broken pieces reflecting
what was, or wasn’t—
harder now to tell.
This one slipped. My fault.
Fingers betray.
Carried, like a letter blown through monsoon rain,
holding perhaps a single devastating word.
A shard of pottery. Evidence
of disaster.
Your name in my mouth:
a cracked vessel spilling ancient wine.
(Once, honey on the tongue.)
To carry something is to wound it.
We catalogue departures.
Even stars practice letting go.
Between syllables, I find you.
You. The pronoun is enough.
The rest is debris. Or hubris.
I will call you forevermore—
an adverb, modifying what?
The past. The absence.
Between these syllables,
I keep losing you.
