Ah, the only place I exist—

on a page,
Past tense.
After looking and becoming, looking and becoming
Like laundry washed and washed,
Some clog of string, or bolt of lint
Remains
To be unspooled by tweezers
Or to settle in the permanent invisible,
The firmament of dust.

Is that the proper place
For consciousness?
What, of that, really is left?
There is nothing out there but resistance to it,
The shape to which it submits
And then flows through without a tracing
Touch,
Just the reverberation
Of its position
In wave-filled space.

No cause can come from it,
As it moves itself without cause,
Not able to stay
Like a painter's eye
As the fibers of the last brush stroke rise.