Keep above the waterline of breath.
The level rises, recedes, the gravitational
pull of it, a border contouring the bones
of the face, soft chambers of the throat.
Fluids have their own willfulness
too holy to constrain. We say that there’s
a gurgle in the chambers of the heart,
or a murmur. The seeds of caught words
ride the bobbing of the larynx. Speech
interrupts that vital act of living, being;
a blockage flying free. The instrument
first given—tune, couple, scrape.
The myna bird incants and outbursts
the drone and roar of machinery.
Water trapped under a dish hisses and spits,
throws its voice, almost alive.
When branches and brick walls and fenceposts
speak themselves a part in the world
on a windy day; the shape of them
against the passage of air forms
fricatives and ululations.
Treading the soundscape drums calluses
into me, after a while. These hills and valleys
aren’t welcoming, and the air is thin.
In the distance I hear the topology
shifting, coming together, parting
like folds of the changing earth.
Over tens of thousands of years,
wind and water drags a stone.
Granite sits heavy and bitter on the tongue.
Forecast calls for ghosts howling
with laughter in the canyon.
They have their own
willfullness, almost alive, but telling
which is mine proves easy as
speaking myself into being.
E.S. Taillon is a queer, neurodivergent writer based in Tkaronto. She also edits, translates, and occasionally makes art out of things left on the sidewalk. Their French-to-English translation of Scenes from the Underground was shortlisted for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers.
