Matthew Wood

Aufheben

Say lazurite, say snowdrift, say grief.
Hear the room weave through
each word’s echo, how
the plosives and fricatives 

are contoured to the smallest, softest
surfaces: moth wings,
dried larkspur petals,
the skin of a rotting plum. 

Even in such stillness, absence
depends on absence.
A voice is never
purely itself as a room

is never purely itself, but what
enters into it.
If space is unformed
voice, voice is unformed silence. 

Threads of light snag on your hand as dusk
frays to a flicker.
Rain begins to fall,
the sound like a seam tearing.

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Matthew Wood is a poet and mechanic from Colorado. His poetry can be found in Neologism Poetry Journal, Sparks of Calliope and Eunoia Review.