If

Lyrics

If pain had a color if that color could move through the bones like a crack of heat scrubbing the marrow clean if we could undress from the inside if pain made a noise if pain might bloom if breath thickened by Winter peels open the night like an eyelid or dead fruit if ice like fire also burns down against the skin if pain had a color or shape if the moon were another planet's sick shadow if the bodies were freed from sight and seeing and sound and the soul if the soul were a lit wick if it vanished if a storm of Trumpeter Swans unraveled from a frozen lake and a bullet sang through the reeds if pain were an endless row of keys if pain had a logic or if logic did if Winter would give way to Winter a key hole drilled into the lake at night dark waters staring back into our own dark if a telescope stares inside another telescope if a single pupil devours the iris if a black moon is discovered inside each of our cells if we lived in a kingdom of silence if an aria were to rise splitting open the boreal dark which darkens beneath itself if pain a gate if pain a lake frozen solid saves its cyclopean eye widening if sight begets sight if eyes open across the body if pain a sheet of paper incised one stroke at a time if fistfulls of night removed like black hair from a drain if each letter a wound if we are all two people as we sleep we are awake in another body if that bodies dies if we never sleep again if we begin to hear our names chanted by someone who is not there if I still feel the boy inside me like a hunger if each letter on the page is a speck of his blood across snow if each letter here could open if we might crawl inside one now if each vowel might be a mouth of a cave overlooking a new world if we might dangle our feet over the edge if pain endless like snow or the sky from which it was torn if night if oh if anything if anything else let me enter even a single letter and sleep