Kye Christensen-Knowles

And who can say what words were spoken at the moment of your conception? What thin hiss slipped between clenched teeth, what private vow, half-ashamed of its own fervor, lay hidden beneath the tongue like a blade? I prefer to imagine the words were tender- though tenderness is often only a ceremonial robe draped over mercy when it seeks admiration. A stubborn little sermon. And you-permafrost with no horizon, as you tell it-sac and sanctum, pantry and planet— though in truth you are a mechanism, self-described and self-devouring, efficient as a factory whistle splitting dawn, indifferent as a clock whose hands advance without regret. You practice hunger as though hunger were virtue, as though appetite alone confers achievement.

You, great thing, are the stomach of my unborn son, who rollicks without lever, bound by sack and skin, with but the smitten corruption of my swallowed insights to crown your borrowed stern. What I once called thought arrives in you as gristle. What I prized as principle dissolves into dower subsistence. Position: murk. All is position, and position is murk.