Form

My thoughts are words:
Forms, sounds
Rhythms, melodies
Words and phrases join and break
endlessly
Repeating themselves
endlessly
Consider it a preoccupation.

Until today I have only ever
taken all this for granted.
For what is a word
but form and sound
(and meaning)
Letters the smallest composite parts

Only now do I imagine
that a word’s form and sound could be
torn apart
twisted
inverted
If what is inside the word
inside its letters
became the outside
And the vast infinite space
that surrounds one small word on the page
Were to become the inside.

All creation and its fires
Every story ever told
every insect that ever crawled
every galaxy that spun
for thousands of millions of years
and collided with another
Would be cradled inside.

The steadiest surgeon would prise apart
the delicate edge of first a serif
then the body rising sharply from the baseline
A jeweller’s tweezers would be used
to carefully wrap the letters’ walls
now bending against themselves
around everything that exists

The word would remain.
Its meaning would be unchanged.
But its sound would be an echo
its form made of complementing angles
bending incomprehensibly past horizons
Everything would be different.
I would be different.

The word would contain me
I would be the endlessly repeating chain of ideas
echoing and permutating
I would be its thought.