a conversation in poetry

Dominique Hecq #2 – Flying out – response to Jean Kent’s #1 (Fly-Away Names)

One letter dropped from your name, and already you are no more—Edmond Jabès

The clinic assigns you a false name,
records the wrong gender, as if
you have already and forever
flitted out of your skin, like talc
fallen from the wings of a lilac
moth, its body winter etheric.

A nurse, hazy blue and wordless
checks your pulse for signs of after
life, maybe dreams of sky gardens
with moons floating like halos
and stars fluttering in the air
above your body open at rest.

Lights dim. Walls close in on shadows
in this new landscape of the heart
where pop-snapped plastic bracelets
cling to skin and excoriate the scars
of time, dropped letters uncover
the trace of your unrepenting voice.