Charlene Diehl - subliming

to wake with perfect awareness of muscle, houses all in a row, questions sprinkled amongst the chairs. look back, little arrow, then step out, cross in full curiosity. the horizon is a nest around the blue egg of the sky, rings around the sun mark the beginning of rest, the generous entry. everything is balance: yes is the only answer. wonder will refuse to unveil itself. up and down, it will say, side to side, lift one cross-hatched corner if you like. the trap door is somewhere, everyone will finally escape. the treasure is the map. sometimes all you can know is breath.

when you’ve climbed through, you cannot recapture it, not any of it: where the arrows point up, where the arrows point down. symbols crash like blocky waves on the cliffs of your dreams. a square peg, a round wish, the dream of entry, over and over, n transforming into m as you feel it in your mouth. the little moon hangs, tips out its gifts, then swings around to catch them again before they clatter into the hungry mouth of the watcher who stands, surveying. so many perfect angles measuring themselves by that daylit moon. they march and march, their ragged rows interrupted by questions they cannot know. the moon is too busy tipping and catching to see any of it.