The spectrum is helical & every arrow is a boomerang.

I’ve been tracking silence

like a trophy hunter

since before I learned to divert

my eyes

from the moon.

The jungle is humid.

Still.

The air fluorescent and jagged,

edged with static

and the wail of ghosts.

Don’t move.

Hide.

I wonder where it all goes

when I am crouched in the mud,

seeking cold solace.

Run.

Run.

Before the cars rumble past,

leaking oil and money.

Money.

The screech of velvet tyres.

I follow their footprints until they

vanish into the sand,

swiped left,

away.

Deleted by the thick black mortar

of the sea.

Go.

I blink too fast.

Breathe too slow.

The mountains move

like a river,

and this language spills silently

from severed lips,

Surgery.

Precision,

In a scalpel

Of performative

Autopsy.

Words

I know,

I know,

I should know.

Aim.

I chase the sound of stillness

but it runs far from here,

in the desert maybe,

a mirrored mirage,

illusions

and grand delusions.

Pounce.

Sometimes I almost catch it

but my pulse forgets to throb.

People call it peace.

They say snow can be gentle

while I’m drowning

in the white hot iron of it.

I was born

mid hunt,

arrow poised in flight,

heart chambers divided,

pale blood stirred from

the mouse and the monster.

Not the human kind.

Not kind.

I don’t know

what I’m hunting for anymore,

if I ever knew at all.

Thought

before the vowels aligned,

or a nest

where my thoughts

don’t ricochet so loudly,

gun fire against

the anarchy in my head.

And the foxes at the door.

Too much

and not enough,

hands oblique,

hoping the quiet will mistake me

for someone worth knowing.

That the whiplash of the wind

will subside,

and the bruises will learn to speak

in the hushed consonants

of healing.