if no one gave you a name

would you answer back?

Or cast away the approbation

like a malice chained to dread

to loosen, falling into dauncy water

where no sound gets through.

If no one described the notion of harm

would you feel it?

Churning like clothes bereft of shape

or a mouth of red ink

writhing with the need to speak

truth that only stains

the corners of each day

like fingerprints without defintion

stay locked in boxes

immutable with mote.

If no one attended your funeral

would you have one?

Or drop from sight, tired by rote

to rush unseen, judged by nobody

but mauve hills bridging dark

slate, fitful against mountains gloaming

with sorrow’s cross hatch

marked like a man too long in the sun

this place of lost color and buried grief

stained in the very dermis

whether this year or a 100 hence

it will always be the same

smell the same, feel the same.

A char-woman without orbit

gathering her soot by default

like feeling the gnaw of being peripheral

before you recognized the word

and it rolled, unnamed, in your

sticky hungering mouth

the lead you sucked

that rendered you mute.