Kristin Prevallet
ORPHéE
[build: our fathers | build: mother, i]
Kristin Prevallet
ORPHéE
[build: our fathers | build: mother, i]
The underworld, a dark hallway littered with debris.
The bedroom, where they always return.
Small window, quilted spread, long mirror.
All spaces are enclosed.
Where a man and a woman come in and out, very quickly: a departure.
Where a woman re-enters: a transitional space.
A man creates a space, but refuses to live in it.
A woman occupies the space, because she remembers inhabiting it as a child.
If she had treated him differently, would she have noticed that he was not an angel?
This was what existed: the robins on the edge of the pond.
This was how it ended: the centipede caught in a rug.
This is how it evolved: the faucet running down brick.
Is it a question of what’s dead?
The ecstasy of saints is the realization that they are water.
Kristin Prevallet is the author of Scratch Sides: Poetry, Documentation, and Image-text Projects. She lives in Brooklyn.