This instant and this form connect to every instant and every form, but not in thought. Come here — embodiment, stand on this shore, which in fact is not brink or curtain or sand or stone. Those rocks on which we walked discussing futures with hands like fronds came to foremost red, turned to reliquaries and later dust. What could our steps have foretold when embers end in umbilical moons? How could I have known you had not yet been born?

We try to wield our way home. Wend and yield a lane less alone. At the end of one telling I came across another’s labyrinth, detached like a discarded chrysalis — and was finally able to wander. Yet this secret I wish to befriend — does not exist in language or compass — is not to locate any other — but to replenish the invisible.

Red thread encircles neck and wrists. Remove prevarications from ethereal sight and there place the changeless. Enter obsequious darkness until you reach the vast — the festival where all ears reflect — every eye garlands — where you allow the embrace — which changes everything — and nothing.

Laynie Browne
Wallingford