Your shoulders shrug a hunch up
in the darkness where your body is.
Your face leans in and floats over
your desk, receiving from a candle
the room’s only light.
Shadows cut shapes in your features—
pale mountain nose, dark craters of
the eyes—like the desolate
topography of a planet
known only through photographs.
It is the breath of a turning page
that makes the candle glow to wobble,
and the shadows to ricochet
around the room, as though they were
mapping out your elusive thought—
which you glimpse—before the candle glow
and the darkness steady themselves.
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