Because Has Teeth

A picture can keep its hands clean.

It leaves a space
between one event and the next,
then waits for us
to crawl inside.

We bring the rope.
We bring the road.
We bring the little courtroom
where every outcome
must drag a culprit behind it.

The blank is never blank for long.

A mind enters it
with tools in its mouth:
hinge, nail, handle,
a door hung carefully
on nothing.

Then it opens that door
and calls the opening proof.

This is the oldest trick
of order:

put two silences side by side
and the reader supplies a scream.

Put a gap between colour and iron
and the reader hears the factory
begin in the walls.

Put a body in the middle
and the reader gives it guilt,
a job,
a throat.

Meanwhile the space itself
stays white,
unstained,
smiling without a face.

No fingerprints.
No confession.
Only the clean little bite
of sequence,

and us,
leaning closer,
feeding it
our beautiful need
for because.