Where the light breaks
Where the letters are scrawled in between lines
I hear the commotion of a typewriter
Like the hauling of rusting chains across a floor
Like the fire of a gun
The bitter silence of a voice caught in a throat
Flooded the room
The dark kind made for thinking

How I watched her then,
The long pale fingers
Her lithe porcelain fingers
Rush across the hollowed typewriter-keys
The writer’s word-worn hands
Tap and push at the sleek
Dark
Iridescent creature
In the dead silence of the night

I watched her then
Glazed in the light of a screen
And a numbed hand cramped
And swollen with words
The intravenous dipping
Bathing the needle in the black blood
With tremulous fingers
Again
Again

I watched the writer then
Through a crack in the hall
Humped over her laboratory
Words spilled across the desk
Perched on her shoulder
Snaking up her arms
In the loud silence of the mind.