They Will Sew the Blue Sail

SOFT | Candice Wuehle

Sort of error. My real hair, unhinged

from my head. Was I a blonde-girl

anymore or an experimental light, a

way for others to see through water,

ashes? I have already said what I am afraid

of. Yonder. I ask my father on the other

end about procession, peaceful

parting: Candie, keep yourself and give

your things. He means give up, give

way. Keep falling from windows

in order to assure the greatness of your

own height, if only to be the wreck

of your own pure lightness. Only

on a second story hotel balcony, bonds

can be broken with the world one

can come to skim, to see as surface. Chlorinated,

incalculable current unbearable without

tallied reflections. Stop. In the rented

room’s mirror, the face I deserve and under-

neath, another atmosphere I have never

endured: I doubt it is oceanic, operable

by infallible salts or expanse of warm blues,

cool blues. An indigo, a lapis, a lazuli. Instead

I suspect a smallness

No—a clarity

No—a clarity

No—a clarity,

a cross at a crossing,

a dryness delivering, upending as does specifically dirt

in demand of a grave. Just

a thin yield, as earth under blade, giving

to pressure within freeze, shale.

I know the odd dumb organ breaks

beneath my breasts, never showing

and only even aware of itself because of the

occasioned hand pushing back my hair to comment

I can hear your

self. Have I already said

what I am afraid of; I have already

tried to fuse this, this

bare flicker

nude synapse