Coherence in Consequence
–Claudia Rankine

Imagine them in black, the morning heat losing
within this day that floats. And always there is the
being, and the not-seeing on their way to—

The days they approach and their sharpest aches
will wrap experience until knowledge is translucent,
the frost on which they find themselves slipping.
Never mind the loose mindless grip of their forms
reflected in the eye-watering hues of the surface,
these two will survive in their capacity to meet, to
hold the other beneath the plummeting, in the
depths below each step full of avoidance. What
they create will be held up, will resume: the
appetite is bigger than joy. indestructible. for never
was it independent from who they are. who will be.

Were we ever to arrive at knowing the other as the
same pulsing compassion would break the most orthodox heart.