Gemma Gorga

The summer she turned seven

they gave her a wooden pencil case

with a pencil and eraser.

The pencil, so she could gnaw the lead

until she found the vagus nerve

of the word.

The eraser, to erase the word

before she could say it.

We showed up late to the house of words.

Now we grope our way down stairs as painful 

as vertebrae and search between the wall’s plastered

shards for some living syllable—sister to bread

and poverty—to bring our lips.

Such as a name, a woman’s name.

The bone of a woman’s name lost between the stones

of these walls that once upon a time housed

flesh inside. And perhaps a jewel

a little box

a mirror you could ask

so many things. 

The leaf falls to the ground and decomposes

 into smaller meanings—moisture, pigment,

 lamina, oxygen, heat, light—the way

 someone spells out their full name

 to a stranger: car-bon di-ox-ide.

 Nothing is lost along the way, neither

 its conversations with the night rain

 nor flying lessons given by birds: it all

 decomposes into smaller units directly

 assimilated by patient ants, the silent mouths

 of the forest. That’s why the language

 of the wind also comes to be spoken

 underground. That’s why worms try on wings

 and fly away, turned into butterflies. Everything

 is matter. Everything is transformed into flight

 when a simple leaf falls to the ground.