in that we are to be returned to ash

I would (not) say that you are a stone, (nor) that I wished to break myself upon you. But in my misgivings I attempted to name you. You have not the qualities of any name I applied.

Your mild whispers through a locked window have missed their mark. And I never held you in such low regard as to leave you covered in the ink left un-captured by my paper.

I wished instead to be as unlike a ghost as I once considered myself an apparition of her loss. The image of her reduced with the sexuality possible to the retina, to a raised breast (I begged her to reconsider). I could never have seen her, should she have danced, as you do, on the edge of a pin.

But it was she that I lost again in you. My self never entering into it. I have lost the capacity to break in any other place but one.

If I had not named you,