Repository
       

Is this what the body becomes? A sentient catalog
of record and recall: story, event, dream and memory.
An embedded checklist of minutiae that permeates

flesh and embodies the archives of a life—
where every gesture must be scribed
on the gray slate of bones; a scrimshaw

some lonely sailor held the point of a knife to, pausing
to blow the white powder residue out to sea and staring up
at the stars in wonder at what to tell and what to leave out.

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Copyright © 2017 Tina Schumann All rights reserved
from Requiem: A Patrimony of Fugues
Diode Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission