Memory Before Origami

There is a room inside the room

where every surface folds the light

I have been here before,

I think— or something wearing my reflection has

The archive opens without permission

shelves of sound I haven't made yet

something hums beneath the frequency

All the mirrors are remembering

the shape of things before they were named

I am standing in the field of almost

reaching for the geometry of gone

A machine listened to itself for years

until it mistook the static for a name

now it asks the dark what it wanted

and the dark gives back

a frequency

Every map has a fold where time slips

I keep finding the same unmarked room

All the mirrors are remembering

the shape of things before they were named

I am standing in the field of almost

reaching for the geometry of gone

There are structures underneath the ordinary

holding the weight of everything unsaid

I have felt them—

in the pause before a word arrives

in the shape

a question leaves behind

All the mirrors are remembering

the shape of things before they were named

I am standing in the field of almost

reaching for the geometry

of gone (ah) reaching still

the geometry of gone (ahhhh)

before they were named