Before Form, Once a Form

I fold against a brick wall,

mortar sweating cold residue,

surface remembering heat long extinguished.

I told myself, distance has thinned balance.

Intrusively, breath arrives innately with irregularity.

Stolen—no, borrowed rather than owned.

I told myself, near my boots—

who’s listening?

Here, here a hat does lie—

so many, many lies.

Why, why do they lie?

Are you lying?—

collapsed unto itself,

felt darkened by weather and abandonment,

crown hollowed, argument removed.

Before form and dawn, recognition arrives,

out of invariable ides.

You again.

The air alters.

Sound thickens along the ears,

as though the coarse pavement has leaned closer

to inexplicably listen with a threadbare stare.

Brick presses aggressively forward.

Grain entering unsteady palms

with unnecessary insistence.

A pallid earthen radiance spills outward

across a soil-adorned, well-traversed brim,

until dodgy edges refuse agreement.

Something passes without direction—

recognition preceding shape,

pressure without origin.

Fine particulate dust suspends mid-fall.

A fatigued wandering wind forgets completion.

Distance hesitates.

Stillness holds—

not long, but long enough.

I… I guess.

Texture returns first—

felt beneath searching fingers,

weather embedded deep within worn fibers,

a resistance remembered before trust.

Something opens.

Air tastes older.

Sound gathers where silence had been resting.

The brim darkens with familiarity.

A pressure loosens behind damned eyes.

The pavement exhales recognition.

Nothing changes.

Everything agrees again.

The world settles again.