Not even if  is a wildfire in close enough range.

Not even the present is within breath.

For years the answers came, the same

answer, or not the same at all,

spotted in a different tongue, then none at all.

The soft filling of the future tense

that would not fit into a grid, one I could name.

And right in the midpoint of what I thought was mid-

life, a new character padded onto the page.

Who traveled from the long after.

Leaking the afterlife.

And all that year, I couldn’t read, knowing language

could be directional, drawing close. Moving away.

But the character was recurring, then the main figure.

His mouth loaded, the bababa.

Between his diaphragm and hard palate:

phonic vibration and smear.

Strained visage behind my 37th year.

And how did we get here—you and I, I mean.

My child whose modifiers I tend and prune on the screen.

You were a no and then one

of ten thousand things arising in the mind’s snow.

Stay, you bid me, stay.

And from that point on there was no question laid

and there I was, now dragged by

the endless itching

of the clock’s hands, around and around

the now, now, now.

Was there ever a chase?

It’s getting late.

I shiver, touching you

here on the page.

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This poem appears in the June 2026 print edition.