By Louie Rivers
Not a cruel place,
only a place that does not explain itself.
A door left open in weather
that never decides to enter or leave.
Wanting exists here
without promise of arrival—
a current that keeps direction
but refuses destination.
A glass left out overnight
collecting the shape of air.
Known and unknown
move through each other
until the boundary forgets its duty.
Young and old
are not separate states—
only the same material
seen as different speeds of wearing down.
A hand, then,
already becoming the hand it will no longer be.
What is new is already loosening.
What is used is only further along the same process.
To make anything
is to participate in its leaving.
Ink drying unevenly on paper.
Footprints filling with dust mid-step.
And still, it is made—
hands shaping what will not stay shaped.
Understanding is not arrival.
It is exposure.
Standing in a room
after the sound has finished using it.
To be here is to be altered
by what does not remain..
And then—
without ceremony,
without resistance—
to be returned
to what everything is becoming.
Louie Rivers is a poet whose work explores memory, materiality, and the limits of language. He is based in the United States.
