Timbre, Tone

Pronouns, Breathing

We didn’t ask to last this long –
we didn’t ask to last at all –
as far as I can tell from any item
in the evidential panoply
remotely open to the likes of me,
we never even asked to be.

But who knows what one asks for when,
or if one asks for anything,
or if one ever stops.
There’s something at the heart –
fresh-caught and toppling –
which presses randomly

to bring its sometimes
not-so-little déjà-vu’s to you –
a hybrid consciousness –
shamanistic liminality between the known
and can’t-be-known –
permitting one to wonder

if the aim is ever win or lose
and if what you had thought was yours
is ever quite your own.
We and I and you and me and one:
pronouns, breathing, left with something
faint but heard: a timbre, tone.

.