WEBVTT

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I want to read--

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here we go.

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So it's a bit longer.

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It's probably the
second or third youngest

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poem in the book.

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I'm going to read this one.

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And then I'm going to
read from a newer piece.

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So it'll be the last one
from Swallowed Light.

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A soliloquy would imply
that the stage is empty.

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The body was found
haloed by flies.

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And I looked beautiful in their
thousands of eyes, didn't I?

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Tell me.

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How every eye is more than
a window into a childhood's

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October red heaven.

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I write my name
backward for you to read

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my body in your own
forsaken reflection.

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I came to the sound of a river
breaking through my front door,

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the wall as white as
God's unbroken bones,

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the silence written there until
they turned off the lights.

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The water was rising to my lips.

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I held my breath
forgetting how to cave

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the last eyehole to Earth.

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So I shut my eyes and
breathed, tasting the blue

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of dawn flooding my lungs.

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The sky was quiet.

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The sharp key of
F ringing the air.

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I promise I'm not
hearing things.

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I beg for another
master to smash

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my jaw into the
color of my eye lids,

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their all day dark
before surrendering

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to their own breaking
blood vessels.

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And this is the way it was.

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Always supposed to be.

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My master yawning, the
land behind us dissolving.

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Tell me why daylight only swells
when the dark fails to bloom.

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Open your mouth, and let me in.

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Somebody's God
whispered down my spine.

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A father broke the table.

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A father cracked
the orbital bone

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in a language I
only know now today.

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A father peeled the night
from another midnight

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and begged me to lie

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still.

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Years later, in the yard,
under hours of moonlight,

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I broke down and ran
through the summer wheat.

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I disappeared

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for weeks.

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I drowned a father in the river,
promising him I'd stay alive.

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Don't tell me how
this ends, dear.

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You're already licking
the end of a black metal

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barrel like the
fingertip of someone

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you are failing to love.

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It was years ago I found
his hands by playing shadow

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puppets during a blackout.

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He flashed once
against the window

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and revealed the same face.

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Mine.

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The body needs its
vertebrae to curve,

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to lock itself into his black
guitar case in the basement

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pantry, to never return.

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I opened it like a door
to another century.

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Nothing grows there anymore.

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I pulled a strand
of hair and watched

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it turn into a centipede,
a snake, an amputated arm,

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phantom limb.

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My palms dusted in ash.

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I licked the lines
of my open hand

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until they curled into smoke.

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I'm gone like everyone else.

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I'm building a bed for everyone.

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At this rate, like thirst,

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I may never finish.

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Where are you, tóota?

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The sky was never there
in the first place.

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Lord, why divide
this land, this body?

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The ceiling, a
hard thud, the red

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of a war inside someone's head.

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And instead, as in the hunger
sinking inside every ghost

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I've craved to remember,
I'm kneeling, praying

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for this sinner to be saved.

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Heaven answers back,
go save yourself.

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Run until running is no longer
a word your mouth can ever

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shape again.

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Carve the wind apart into
one single lasting answer.

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Find the body there.

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Under its exile, its
ruin of spent vows.

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