A kitten plays beneath the fountains and citrus trees
under the butterflies of a Moroccan rest stop
coffee and a pen and paper connected to the
wish to vanish, to not-quite-erase the memory
that there was something once called i that
appeared under the light of a sun's intensity
to turn to sand, as it all does with enough
fire and time and the space between grains
make the argument for silence; yet we
disappear in our attempts to go quieter
than the universe knows how, because there
is no nothingness without somethingness and
you see the contradiction and determine
to avoid the hypocrisy and do not avoid it;
sometimes my scribbles, always a lowercase g,
the most beautiful letter pressed into service on
top of the prose that almost said something
but was drowned out by the silence and noise
feeding the heartbeat of the birdsong and the
crashing of the waterfalls that won't dampen
the desert until it all goes to water and then
back again to words and sentences and dust.
Roman Ryan 