Instructions for the End

Everything seems closer from far away. Your face
a name on an envelope. Here is your hair
in ink, a cathedral. Do you trust me?
You can always remove the keystone.
A summer scarf looking for a wheel.
The hair on my sheets wrapped tight
round my fingers. Slipped in my mouth
a nipple resistant to fingerprints. Follow this
to the beginning, trace upon trace
removed (The paper is blank. The pulp
is unpressed. The tree is a virgin
to sawblades. The earth is empty,
is an empty lake) to memory: Before me
is your back on a breakwater, your hair
an opening to your neck, your skin a shadow
of my tongue. An effigy burns
eternally. It is never erased. All ashes
are arrows. The bluejay of your stare.

Andrew Kozma
“Instructions for the End” appeared in Zone 3, #48.