Out of hazy nothingness comes a mantra
sung to the altar of my body.
I hear my name over and over again
until it feels strange and loses all meaning and I stop trying to hear.
With urgent orison you try to reunite my body and mind.
You read to me from my own holy book
tell me my story for fear it has been seizure-shaken from my brain.
I feel your hands, desperate unwanted anchors, on my face and on my chest but my own hands are lost somewhere. My body is tossing in the breeze
like so many dead leaves scattering apart.
Your mantra passes through me and fills me with hopes I cannot live up to
of the person, not the dead leaves no I am leaves now leave me
I will be reborn from this, hollow and intangible and needing no prayer.
This chant is for you, not me. Your elegy to the disappeared name.

n.a.j.Grant 2014