From the Fishouse

Who controls the past controls the future:
who controls the present controls the past.
—George Orwell, 1984

1.
Momentary sensation
of a remembered whole:
two months after you died

your letters kept
arriving: Hello.

2.
A finite set
of surviving

neuro-chemical coordinates.
X (0,1): My love, you are
inaccessible.

3.
Memories are actually memories
of memory. Here, they are

twinned

in opulence,
fuzziness; washed

in architecture.

4.
Here, the temporary
constellation of memory;
Y(-1, 0): Your heart,

the right half
of a split-brain patient—
the entire atmosphere

of our mind lighting
up chemically. Flickering
electrical: (picture

the lightning
storm above the kitchen sink
as the halogen
bulb switches on).

5.
We were searching—
but there was no way to pin-
point the first, lost

memory. We were inside
unfilled consciousness:
pellucid, dreaming.

6.
Z (-1:1), Who we were: amendments
of the way we are

now. Situations were devised:
each hemisphere of us

digested without awareness
of what the other was

experiencing.

7.
That last night we were wave-
touching, our brain
making our hands

heavy with sleep. The magnets
were left too close
to our temples, erased
us entirely:

old snow, a white blowing
into the folds—this firn, our
winter mind.