What an honor always to read with Camille
and to be a press sibling.
Speaking of which, I don't even have a copy of Burnings,
you know that?
So--
[LAUGHTER]
So maybe we can work something out, split, you know.
I want to get in on this two things.
I'll start with this poem.
It serves as a sort of Ars Poetica if you will.
Threshold.
In the body, where everything has a price, I was a beggar.
On my knees, I watched through the keyhole
not the man showering but the rain falling through him.
Guitar strings snapping over his global shoulders.
He was singing, which is why I remember it.
His voice, it filled me to the core like a skeleton.
Even my name knelt down inside me asking to be spared.
He was singing.
It is all I remember.
For in the body where everything has a price, I was alive.
I didn't know there was a better reason.
That one morning my father would stop.
A dark coat paused in downpour.
And listen for my clutched breath behind the door.
I didn't know the cost of entering the song was
to lose your way back.
So I entered.
So I lost.
I lost it all with my eyes wide open.