Here I am. Pared from time by an abstract eye,

held taught to the line of your gaze, turned slowly

in your head, a silvered body drifting

beneath your stare ,mouthing the layer of air you bring.

You make me stand in your image. You will sift

what you stand in. Your silt of memory, soul’s ballast,

and scent the outline of my absence.

Make no mistake, you will be mistaken.

this face is membrane merely, worn, blurred

by the weight of light it has to bear of this world.

It is light that gives meaning here, falling

across a cheek, bridge of the nose, the eye’s hollow in

these brief wisps of face, their mists and drifts

like some ghost hatched on this dark hiatus:

it is not memory that saves us but the gift

of  forgetting. In this, I am reshaped, reforged.

This emptying brings an endless falling into grace

as you refill the vessel to the brim with your gaze -

by this , everything is changed, a world uncurling

on the iris. Keep looking. Keep looking.