Two Rooms, One Voice Keeps Moving the Furniture

You want a simple map. There isn't.

There are two rooms in your head and the hallway between them keeps lengthening like a sentence no period. In one room a mouth opens and law falls out. In the other room a hand takes notes.

The radio has two stations. One that names and the one that does. Tonight they bleed through each other and you hear: Keep your promises crossing over Step forward now until it sounds like Keep forward and Promise now and you are walking.

This is where the floodlight finds you. This is where you pretend the light is a hand. This is where you can’t with pretending. The voice says Stop and the legs stop like good dogs. The voice says Run and the legs remember they are most made of wanting. Behind glass at the edge of thought: a little man. A coin of silver beneath his tongue. Sneaks in: be kind be safe do not name the knife call it nothing.

In front of the glass you are all wrists and bright compliance, the sentence arriving before its carrying breath. You try to say I. The hallway echoes: I. I. I. Sounds like someone knocking from your side of the door. Window opens, and there he is with his pencil held like a struck match. He circles your lips with red: check facts slow down begin again.

Tell me who is speaking. The radio answers: That depends what time it is. Tell me who is listening. The radio too: The body that moves when called. You feel tuned.

You write: I will not lie. Cross out: unless the lie keeps me breathing. Write softer underneath: I will leave light burning in the hallway. I’ll leave a little wash to wait between. Small adjustment in frequency. Law finds a voice. Voice is person. Person becomes you walking the hallway, switching lights, carrying both rooms like water in a bowl you’re spilling.

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