Man Poem by Celine Socrates

Silence is how one addresses the need for depth; when poverty for words becomes a mere exercise of virtue, a rite of passage to scars. Small wounds clot with time, until all that is left is the stiff coating that shreds off at the slightest movement.

Forgetting is so easy, once scars have ceased to be.

I often wonder at how darkness moves when you speak, the nuance of sound in space, where Einstein claims time also exists; as though time and space define existence.

You exist, Your pre-Cartesian self, in the torn page of an unopened book, yellowish and unread, unwritten but for a Word that states my name: small inkblots from a pen.

A page in a book, a book in a shelf, a shelf in a library, among a million libraries–is where you exist; at times unthinking, at times unfeeling.

Armed with a large piece of wood, your claim to happiness, you march in slow, faltering steps, into the abyss they call Death, at the fullness they call Time.