The world presses in,
a towering river of debris glittering
with specks of one ongoing explosion.
All of us are morphing,
our faces layered with many faces, two eyes
gazing upward from the ending of time.
Our skin is travelling from country to country
even as we sit still
and the second hand stays
frozen on the wall clock.

From somewhere far inside us
a young woman of a millennium ago
rises to the surface, comes close
and we shiver with all her tenderness.
At the place where our breath is suddenly held back
a child is there, watching the trees above him
spin in fast motion. In the vast
empty bar room of the mind
a skeleton holding a wineglass
gives us a familiar nod.
Birds fly in and out
of the multiple cages
that are our ribcage.
A single cry from any one of their throats
is enough to thread
white light across the darkness.

So large, so impossible –
our hands shake
as we carry the world.