MELISSA CUNDIEFF


                                     



INDEXICAL

 

 

This book I open is meant to remind me
of what happened in the past.

The time I drew a line in a dark bar

and slid an ice cube across the wood.
We burned ourselves up to get where we couldn't

have been. To confront my opacity, I pressed

a candle against my palm.
October leaves
assemble a necessary message, the bright red

of their dying a symptom of denial.

The weather knows there is no such thing
as the absolute absence of hope.
I doubt

in a year we will even be talking.

The invisible wire stretching from your finger
to my chest will spit electricity,

but no one will be left to seal it. This is when

the relationship between my eye
and the empty room will indicate you are gone,

if you were ever there, whoever you are

and whatever it does to want for us,
in our nothingness, the condition

under which we come back.








TYPO 29