The empty space that might still
fill with words, crowding the absence
with considered metaphor.
No melody, but notes and shuffled
tones, an envelope of glass
pumped free of color, shape, and
movement, as pain seeps through
the thumb-drummed off-world
dictionaries.
Red as cinnabar and scooped
to air’s noiseless roasting,
to wait not so long for not so much,
column of quicksilver upset by
touch, clumsied to a flight like ambush
in its freakish aftermath.