Me

Lots of contemporaries—

but “me” is not my contemporary.

My birth without “me”

was a blemished offering on the collection plate.

A moment of flesh, imprisoned in flesh.

And when to the tip of this tongue of flesh

some word comes, it kills itself.

If saved from killing itself,

it descends to the paper, where a murder happens.

Gunshot—

if it strikes me in Hanoi

it strikes again in Prague.

A little smoke floats up,

and my “me” dies like an eighth-month child.

Will my “me” one day be my contemporary?