but how we have hollowed such
a complicated animal

your desire surfacing
my darker ways
as your surface

of underlying fear
known suffering
like capacity
slow as

(a baby runs barefoot across the concrete floor
surrounded by the whirlwind seat of family
his mothers place their hands over sharp corners
his grandmothers grab him before he exits
the door left open to the porch warung
where the local autist mampirs for a treat
off the street of his village neighborhood
as great-grandparents near-toothless smiles
play peek-a-boo for kisses as he toddles by
like every baby his worst enemy is “no”
and in his hands a wooden dragon chomps
at cookie tins and plastic-wrapped sugar snacks
the loudest tyrant in the room screaming
his raw desire to be louder than U.S. America)

the end
a little bull in
a spoked labyrinth
our babbled reckoning

but these things
are left behind
as remembrances

of what will come to be
a sacrificial self for self-legibility


//

Phaedrus: (as Lysias, cont.)

but these things
are left behind (kataleipesthai)
as remembrances (mnemeion)

of what will come to be

// 233α

ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μνημεῖα καταλειφθῆναι

τῶν μελλόντων ἔσεσθαι