Sleeping with Butler’s Lives of the Saints

After Octavio Paz What’s most human must drive an arrow to the heart. Ghosts, too, must abide by this directive & remain transparent, going about their business in old houses. Before I was an I, I longed to be ethereal. Sprouting wings at will & gliding through cul-de-sacs and malls around the valley. My hands, too, would gradually disappear followed by my arms, then neck & head until my whole body was slight as allergen. Before I was an I, I spoke an old language that would return on drowsy afternoons. Therefore I struggled to say the simplest sentences. So much so that the maligned semicolon became an ardent ally, an island of pause and the deep breath. The comma, too, bless its tiny soul, was the crumb which the god of small favors multiplied tenfold for my morning pie. Before I was an I, knowledge clung to me like burrs & hunger guided my ship like the barefoot light on the sleeping land & sea.