To Confront You

I have to confront you;

there’s no way around, 

neither room to turn

nor shade to shelter in.

It has to be on this bursting breath

with which I’ve filled my chest;

it fast grows stale

and sharp.

My voice, like Pan’s shadow:

impish, weightless and

alone

tears away,

taking flight.

Perhaps a courageous

wisp of steam

through the spitty seam

of a long-rattling pot

and its lid.

What remains

lies in tepid dissociation—

a child in a cooling bath

recalling a preverbal

recurring nightmare:

massive floating cylinders

colliding unpredictably in dark, gravity-free space.

Most coming together with

an unlikely delicateness—

a muted clink,

but then, two with a sudden,

reverberating crash,

stripping flesh from bone.