Ontology

I tell you about the woman on the bus, how she murmurs
a line by Dalí; a thing about shadows, her voice
an old song, her face a folded photograph of the sea.
how she sits in her garden entire impossible summers,
a distance holding the sadness of horses, church bells
where there is no church, in nettle-blistered hands.
the city’s confetti glitter weakens my memory
of the cherry branch’s shadow
on the worn, enamel bowl of her face.
in this city you float over me, your body luminescent
with desire. that language is dead.
that the shadow theatre of your limbs written on me
is not calligraphy, but departure.
I show you the pipe mapping between my hand
and her silence. how I try to hear her name
but there is only the black dress of crows breaking apart,
there is only you, opening the balcony door,
and the curtains, full of the wind’s silhouette,
more alive than we may aspire to become.
 
 
 
Triin Paja is an Estonian, living in a small village in rural Estonia. Her poetry has appeared in The Moth, BOAAT, Otis Nebula, The Cossack Review, Gloom Cupboard, The Missing Slate, and elsewhere.