losing our grip on purpose

By Stacey C. Johnson

I remember being something like light. How with nothing
to claim, not even memory––I weaved, unfettered between
eons: space into shine, without substance. Mass is another
unknowing, a potential to vary depending on energy patterns
of particles in motion, more rapid when confined to a context
of outside force, as reactive unknowns until––

the first thing to learn was forgetting well enough to dream
boats for night crossings, those busy port thick with not yets;
then watching anchors, ropes, keeping pen and lighthouse
nearby for the safe of it all, seeming. To hear what blooms
on tongues before speech, pulsing reverb to throat walls.

What I mean to drum is meaning to remember where
meaning is murdered, for what lives when––What is
the opposite of how we floated in that space that held us
in its singing silence, drifting to and from? Approaching,
we gave each other names as means to hold the pass

                                     ––between us, all reflection, depth
                                                                                                     until

Later came noise to shatter sound, and we stopped
passing them, our names. I may forget mine, soon.
Or the one that held me floating, more than mine.
So make this feeble note, unsure of sounding anymore.
It is this, a scrap of decimated raft that I hold,
something between here and that
                                                                                     down

Stacey C. Johnson writes and teaches in San Diego County. She is a graduate of the MFA program at San Diego State University and creator of The Unknowing Project. Her work appears in a variety of journals and she is the winner of the 2023 Editor’s Prize in poetry at The Mississippi Review. Her poetry chapbook Flight Songs has just been released from Finishing Line Press (February 2024). You can find her at staceycjohnson.com.