Impervious

Adithya Patil

 

everybody spoke to themselves at once

and i felt a million breezes hit me at once.

i saw the weaver bird drop like an old fruit

 

and imagined pebbles falling

from the windows of minds

 

huddled for no purpose. the sky seemed

glass—shattered but unbroken and held

itself together how it held down my sight

 

—always separated: the seer

and the seen, the coming

 

and the been. mirror stain: surface: page,

air, face, cotton, lens, prayer, linen, falling,

skin. I found myself dancing in a TV turned

 

off for silence. i realized i was

only membrane, holding against

 

two sides, yet wanting to overflow with one

still unchosen but holding against all holding

on to continue longer, just a little longer, as if

 

in a falsely remembered

expectation, as if i was

 

still inside the movie,

and they told me

i was framed