Postal workers deliver dangling conversations

between people of infinite patience.

I attempt to read the letter over the signature

of someone I once knew, or think I knew,

feeling my mind cool and crackle at the thought,

as if a slow flow of magma

has encysted the question I asked long ago,

and I can no longer break inside

without the inevitable shattering

into a spray of disconnected pebbles,

an archipelago of meaning that will not coalesce

into a piece of land large enough to land upon,

large enough to grasp and exclaim,

This—this is what I was attempting to recall.

So I am left island-hopping,

a hopeful pirate searching for a late-alphabet burial,

making do with the occasional glint of coin

plucked out of the sand in anticipation,

only to find a superscription long worn down

and a profile no longer familiar.