The instrument glides along its predestiny—always at an angle, at an angle—its tone an incantation against cross-border flows, migrating colours: the age-old interdiction of overlapping things. Coal-steam perfumes the tract to my stomach already tightening around the image of satay; yet over and over the stick can only come up in wax, as over and over I train my hand to press, scrape,

Celup.
.
.
.
I seed ellipses when my hand can no longer think
to hold a line, and in these dots, a will collects itself;

How can I
– spring like a snake along the path of its instinct
– act before the line of my moment hardens to a stop, a s top, a  stop:

BERHENTI!
Hati-hati di jalan, iya
(I know)
In between my canting's walks:
Celup, celup, celup.
.
.
.
I, too, am cooked by the bowl of nourishment:
Its roiling fume which
Before clearing the path of mountains
Is death—and I flee
From the plenitude, barely closing
The door behind me.
.
.
.
Do I leak also?
I am not imagining
Warm-red wax
Dripping onto where I am not
Fast enough to steer from,
Like when I turn unknowing in my sleep smudging
Someone else's sacred page;
"It really goes"—flows—

See, a woman: a pen.

Then the hunger for your writing must come from this: to be the first surface that will soak your mark upon the world, my mouth's cave the nest for your most inchoate jets. Writing, the surge of energy that both ruins and makes the cloth I cover my nakedness with, is today that well of steaming infinitude narrowed to purpose by our deeply inked hands.