Act ii – 04:50

I forget if I am breathing in or out or backwards.

A chorus. A choir. My lungs a duet made of velvet.

I contemplate what it means to be held arrested by your heart.

Beat the pulse, the base, hushed the bass, barely an echo

Barely the time it takes to blink.

I choose water. I choose to be tied by the strings of my old guitar.

I choose the piano on the bed of the sea.

Dragged by the undertow, the poem shrieks at first

then is buried beneath white, then blue, then sky.

I can smell wood. I drown before the air in me drowns.

The pleats inside the chorus trail.