I’m trying to appreciate
record skips, deleted scenes,
navels, chasms, entera,
white-outs and redactions,
the empty, gaping spaces
of atoms, cabinets, skulls,
the parsecs that divide us
from unfathomable stars,
parts no longer part of me:
baby teeth like craven
troops deserting one by one,
nucleotide deletions,
cells that burst and die
every seven years,
the 14 billion years
before my birth,
the looming future eons
that no cosmologist
will be alive to measure,
the third of life abed, asleep,
the increments of movies missed,
the guest rooms never occupied,
the last, badly timed,
I love you on the phone
cut off since the other
interlocutor hung up.
Eventually, perhaps,
I’ll come to love blank pages
of the manuscript,
the measures full of rests
that depopulate the score,
but for now, give me fullness,
blue and blinding, everything
a million at a time
