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Spoken version
A recorded reading of “Under the Eye”. If the player does not load, use the original audio source.
I take the road the map forgot. Trunks stand guard—metronomes keeping the hush on time. Fog gathers, then parts: not horizon but an eye, rust-ringed, the forest wearing witness. No god; only daylight making a pupil. I am small arithmetic, walking towards my sum. Steps click like shutters. Trees align, combing to lashes. The gaze weighs my breath, my doubt, my pocketed name. At the pupil the world is a well. There’s no door but looking; I go on.
Alternative version
A road unzips the woods; trunks stand like looms. Mist lifts a curtain—there: an eye the size of weather, rim-rust, rain-bright, studying the stitch I make of myself. Its iris turns the horizon inward. The pupil—well-deep, bell-dumb—teaches without a word: each step makes me less, how small an I an eye can hold. I don’t run. I become a prayer, not prey, a hush kept between two breaths of bark. The path pulls taut, a filament of will, threading toward the needle of its gaze until I’m only motion, a seam in a face of fog. It doesn’t blink; the forest blinks for it. I keep walking, seen into being.
Lyrics
say my name the wall wears a strapped mirror cold glass keeps its little weather I stand where the dark stays quiet the mirror talks behind me a sheet picks out a body air sleeves lift to my elbows no face, no feet, a pale sail waiting for wind that never comes tell me what you see if the glass stays dumb cross out my old name leave what's left of me say my name keep it the same hold this frame say my name fractures vein the circle like winter black wire stitches the silence shut thin lines write a bad signature the mirror can't read my name I touch the rim, the room holds breath somewhere that sheet learns my height outside, night pins to a nail it drapes the street the same say it straight to me tell me what remains draw a line through doubt leave the name that stays say my name keep it the same hold this frame say my name I sign in wire, then wait I listen, I don't break say my name keep it the same hold this frame say my name say my name
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