Theorem

Quickened

0406.2025

Where is my brown-eyed boy?

I first felt you in the North—

somewhere near the bone of Scandinavia—

your figure cast against the rim

of your own lost homeland.

Somehow, I knew you.

Somehow, you were like me:

severed

from your half.

Where did you go?

Did you die in the quiet?

Sink into quicksand?

Did they devour you—

fail to see you?

We’ve never met.

Perhaps you never were.

And yet…

you came to me

when I drank pain

and ate abuse like bread.

When I was far,

and alone—

as always—

but could no longer

hold its singularity.

You arrived from the East.

I saw you—clearly.

And now you name yourself

coward.

Thief.

You took my hope into the night,

rode it off

on a white horse

until you vanished—

a pale speck

swallowed by black.

Then silence.

Ah, you are showing me

just how lost I’ve become.

And how hope—

is nothing.

m.c.f.

❦