I traveled all night. It felt like
traveling inside someone else’s
unspoken prayer, back when
prayer hadn’t devolved, yet,
to mere ritual (though ritual
too, of course, has its tricks
and powers). I slept, some; I
woke—once, to what looked
at first like the sea flickering
“deep from within a dark
green shadow,” as they say, in
novels, but we were nowhere,
by then, near water. . . . “Sleep
tight, tiger,” a voice said to me,
as if to a child, while another
voice, speaking over that one,
said, “Just because some people
think gentleness means suffering,
usually, doesn’t mean it’s true. . . .”
Mirror, window, mirror. My
given name is not my secret
name, that I’ve only once said
aloud, to no one: all around me,
a fog settled like a cloud of
bees on a thicket of flowers—
blue to black, black to purple—
then each bee leaving the flower’s
body like what is called the soul.