Echo (All She Lost She Lost)

All she lost she lost

at once. Her mouth could no longer offer,

at breakfast, apricot,

acerbic syllables on the tongue. Acquiesce  was gone, allure

and ardent, ache  refused to be named

but remained a thorn in her

breast, breast, she couldn’t say it,

couldn’t say come

closer, couldn’t say cock or covet, blessing  or  blue, losing  beauty

didn’t so much upset her, it was a word which lessened the thing itself,

desire  was never enough for her, despair  too

enormous for language, but she rather missed

endure, missed earnest and empty, eggs and exaltation,

feelings, she discovered, were awful if solely

felt, unspoken they were egregiously real,

for reasons unknown to her, she wished very much, very often, to say

field, she just wanted to, to fill again her mouth with

grasses and excessive sadness, oh how she loved

gratitude, she would say it over and over until

her heart believed her,

it was her only prayer, she regretted never uttering

ichor when she had the chance,

intimacy was underutilized, idle, inkling,

illume, though, in truth, some things were always

ineffable, and she relieved to be relieved of the duty of  trying,

just having the basics would have sufficed, she would have gladly relinquished

jest  and   jejune and  jacaranda to keep

kindness  and kinky  and kin, lemon and  lace  and

love, perhaps this what she longed for

most, as unbearable as it was to be so

monstrously human, before, she thought maybe she was

needless, obdurate as a stone

or the wind which touched everything with a pernicious detachment,

please was the first word she attempted, in the meadow, trembling as the dark stayed terribly

quiet, she had never heard such

quiet, it was a quiet longer than death, when above her at last a storm

ruptured, she repeated keenly its howl, awash with

rage, oh, she was certain, if she could recover

suffering  she’d refuse to

say anything else for all of her days, her mouth mouthed uselessly

salt, mouthed sate, mouthed

salve, she waited in the shade for a stranger

to voice what she knew to be urgently

true, she resented both

the voice and the waiting, and the birds

their unavailing refrains,

undeserving of their instruments and uncharitably

vociferous at dawn, frogs their lubricious clamor, katydids’

violent, ubiquitous chorus, it was an error not to appreciate umbrage fully, nor vex nor

volition, she never had an occasion for virtue but

wished returned to her vainglory and vesper, wished for

waffle and wallop and wasp, why not, she wanted

want, wanted wrong, it exhausted her, her

xenogenic lexis, her inexpressible grief, what she would give to whisper

yellow  just once to what was, petals and morning

yawning brightly before her, to sigh

yes, to say  you, oh, to say you—but her maw hung open. Futile

zero, destitute.