WEBVTT

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I watch the clock as
of reading a sentence.

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The numbers were letters.

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The shorthand was a subject,
the long hand a predicate,

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and the seconds a verb.

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We both stared at the ceiling.

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I said my eyes feel as
if they're inside cups.

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Then she said, shall I pour
your eyes back into your ears?

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Language structures what
we see without saying it.

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But I began to pull
bones from sentences.

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And I rearrange the
letters into skeletons.

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I heard a circle as
if it were a clock.

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It did not tick, made
the sound of an insect.

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It was a number in the
shape of a cricket.

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I opened an envelope
addressed to me.

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I pulled out a blank sheet
of paper, unfolded it.

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In the letter-- no message, no
sender's name, just whitespace.

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I like that you exist, she said.

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Like the lowercase i,
my body felt present

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on a page fitted in a
dark suit, white necktie,

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and, inside the
black dot, a smile.

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But it was the way
her skin felt as she

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dressed into a black outfit,
the way her body slipped

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into a long dark dress
shaped like a shadow.

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He picked up a stone,
held it to his ear,

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shook it like a broken watch.

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He opened it.

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And inside were small
gears shaped like a clock.

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I am a skeleton, a sentence too,
although like you I am neither

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a meaning nor a structure, just
silence and a complete thought.

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This next one is titled
Ats'íísts'in, which is a Diné

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word.

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It's the word for skeleton.

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Below the skull, there is part
of a letter shaped like a bone.

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But the skull is not a skull.

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It is a black dot
with white teeth.

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And the piece of
the letter under it

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is not really a bone,
rather a dark spine.

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This is not the end of language.

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When it was alive, it had a
rib cage, each rib taken out

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by small pincers--

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the way strands of eyelash
are removed from eyelids.

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And the dot used to have eyes,
white like two grains of salt.

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But they were dissolved
by two drops of ink--

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the way a letter
fades on the page

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after many years of reading or
how it soaks into a fingerprint

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and forgets itself,
the way word tries

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to breathe inside a
closed book, the way

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a letter shivers when
a page is turned.

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Because underneath
sound, there is thought,

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language, a complete structure.

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Within the white
coffin of paper,

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if you shake it and
listen, it will move,

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rattle like bones on the page.

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Ahéhee.

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[APPLAUSE]

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