WEBVTT

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This poem is called
"Untold Pact."

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"In an aged barn
a born new thing.

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Sky as old as clocks.

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Suddenly, everything
shiny or dull.

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The ice comes like rhinestones,
deceptive but not at all.

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Snow is cheap.

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The base of her spine like
wrung hands, a worn washcloth

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rinsed and rinsed.

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The snow falls leaves like
love and everything sags

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under the sudden lifted weight.

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She immediately began a
journey towards a dark place,

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an open space in
the country we think

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of when we say
the country, where

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asphalt mouths a
slobbering mirage,

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obsidian kissing obsidian.

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We know nothing more.

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It'd please you to
remain nameless.

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It'd please you that you
forced me to be cruel.

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A fool or a kid, a child
or a god, unloving.

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She moans.

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There's little separation
between birth and drunkenness,

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and the erring therein--

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indistinguishable.

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For example, she reached
for my breast, as you have.

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As yours, I expect no
less and push her away.

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You'd be happy to see
the world suffering

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so reflected, an
heir of your own mind

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to take up the
yoke, to be an ass.

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Sometimes I think
of it as prophecy,

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my young self haloed
in a guest room,

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the words welcome in foam
board above my crown.

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Half conscious, dreaming
of myself as fern,

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checking my belly for
spores and finding none.

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Waking sticky, startling from
an image, myself in a vase

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on a mantel.

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Flowers don't matter.

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It's winter.

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I've cut and buried parts
of myself that loved plants

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that bloom then die immediately.

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I don't need encouragement.

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This is the pact we make by
being born, that you go on

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and I go to waste.

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For years I thought it
akin to some specific land

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and anything can summon it.

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But now it is a muted
pastel, a part of everything.

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It no longer startles."

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