Deep in Oceanic Trenches, All Light Is Bioluminescence

The static on the phone breathes [between our breaths]. I thinkof voiceless vowels, [a quarter rest]—Oh, all the ways we signify

absence. My mouth tries on the shapes [of sounds] but nothingsticks. Somewhere, a sky [is struck] with a firefly's flash

pattern. I think of the elephant's call as it weaves [infrasonic]through the forest—[so much] of what is spoken [we cannot hear].

[On my lips, the last flicker of] a flashlight betweenwindows—[this darkness, I promise] is trying to say so much.