Letters swallow themselves in seconds.Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and
suddenly isn’t, an absence shouts,
celebrates, leaves a space. I begin
again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and
leaves, only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
Naomi Shihab Nye
(from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems)
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