Epektasis

I begin, as ever, with the body,
that difficult psalter,
something being drawn from me—
not confessed, not forgiven—
but rinsed away
with the indifferent mercy of rain
cleaning a city that does not repent.

I wake already mid-exodus.
The body has signed no creed.
Still, it knows when the garment of weather
no longer consents to its shoulders,
when light alters its hand
upon the ribs.

First, the turn—
a subtle compliance of organs,
learning a new jurisdiction.
Then the bed:
sheets provisional as snow,
retaining my warmth
as if unsure whether to bless or release me.
The mattress hesitates,
like a parish redrawn overnight.

The bones object softly.
They have memorized another gravity,
a grammar older than policy.
This is tuning.

The blood is less patient.
Blood does not debate.
It remembers its routes,
its ancient syntax—
no vowels, no permissions,
untroubled by theory.

I am conveyed—
seated, secured, facing forward.
The train moves with practiced gentleness.
Stations pass like sentences
already pronounced.
Every cell keeps vigil.

Corridors lengthen—
white, administrative arteries.
I walk across ground that still knows my name
while being carefully separated from it.
This is the cut:
to stand inside home
as it is rescinded by order.

Hands seal. Screens blink.
The body is translated into files.
No one consults the marrow.
The blood is not summoned.

There are borders unseen
unless you sleep among them.
They pass through dreams,
through muscle memory,
through the precise hush
where love abides.

I love her not as landscape
but as liturgy—
a shared rule of prayer,
a place that shelters me
without commentary,
where nothing essential requires conversion.

Elsewhere, I practice gentleness.
I honor the beauty assigned to me.

Sometimes I want the body to betray me,
just to prove it still chooses.

This body remembers.
It keeps its own books.

Time fractures.
Morning is lifted from night
like bread improperly broken.
Hours return altered,
creased by handling.
I arrive before leaving.
I leave after I have gone.

By the time I am named present,
only a portion consents.

The remainder waits—
circulating, seated,
lying in a bed that recalls
how my spine once aligned
with the city’s mercy.

They say I have returned.
But return presumes departure.

I have not left.
Only the body
has been reassigned.