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Between breaths

For dad

How do we divide memories?
How do we partition those far countries?
How can things slice up so well that our loss still leaves us whole,
So that we don’t slip, cutting ourselves.

How do we leave in our traces something more
So that, at the end, we may still kiss the faces of our dearest
Without feeling plastic, paper or glass against our lips?

So that our exhalations of life
Aren’t followed by inhalations of death?
How should we honour the logos of our father
And the sinewy grasp on essentials of our mother,
Now both fallen from the circuiting of fortune?

The product of the analytic
Is the despotic
And the product of the synthetic
Is the flesh.

No importunate scientist,
Or philosopher, imposter
Can explain this by thieving DNA
Or calcifying the the black kettles and pots of our thoughts
With "ought to this" and "ought to that."

Our dearest breathed out life and breathed in death
While we breath out death and breath in life
So I think we will find our true inheritance whole again
Only in the hiatus,
In the stillness
Between breaths

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