Ats'íísts'in

Below the skull there is a part of a letter

shaped like a bone. But the skull is not a skull;

it is a black dot with white teeth. And the piece

of the letter under it is not really a bone,

rather a dark spine. This is not the end of language.

When it was alive it had a ribcage;

each rib taken out by small pincers

the way strands of eyelash are removed

from eyelids. And the dot used to have eyes—

white like two grains of salt. But they were dissolved

by two drops of ink. The way a letter fades

on the page after many years of reading

or how it soaks into a fingerprint and forgets itself.

The way a word tries to breathe inside

a closed book; the way a letter shivers when

a page is turned. Because underneath sound

there is thought. Language, a complete structure

within the white coffin of paper. If you shake it

and listen, it will move, rattle like bones on the page.