Ballet
--Aditi Machado

Though I live in a mountain I hear the sun
.............outrage the skin
of a desert, it become a blister. But
.............the mountain
is what I understand as one understands focus
.............and monument. The nature
of dance, its arms and legs. The monument
.............of the body and gravity
in relation to what departs from the pit
             of self. How far
I stretch. What is the end of time, is it
             the peak of a mountain? Is it
the way a tree stops upon its leaves? Is it
             the concentric mind
of a tree, the rings and rings of a tree
that forever one escapes or falls into
and survives?
                 If the dead center of a tree is not its mind
                 but the moment about which its thinking devolves,
                 then fallen am I
                 into orbit—
                               I am time as much as sand and water. I travel
                               along a landscape of laceration. Someone
.......................................measures me
                               and cannot entirely. A vastness
                               like the opening out of a molecule. (The rain
above a desert will not rain because being a question it cannot answer.) Who am I is the question asked in the mirror. This is not answerable, so I kiss the desert and come back a blister. The desert is all about me. It inherits me. I have come along with the nature of Everything. How fast I go when I eliminate the sandstorm.


[via conjunctions]