The Blue Decides Before the Lamp Is Lit

The indigo turns true inside its clay vessel, long before the lamp is lit — ask the cloth nothing; it has already answered, before the lamp is lit.

Somewhere a broom of birch twigs scrapes the frost from a nameless ledge, eleven winters of a devotion no one commissioned, before the lamp is lit.

Nine mornings a small wrist counted its own breath into a cord of red wool; the Temple’s messenger came only to announce what was finished, before the lamp is lit.

This year the whole Bazaar bought its oil in worry, the dark arriving early, as if light paid for in advance could outpace what gets decided before the lamp is lit.

My teacher never once said the water was ready. She pressed my wrist to the copper and let the burn be the only language spoken between us, before the lamp is lit.

An old woman’s broom asks nothing of the street it serves every morning — I have asked mine for an audience. Hers only asks for frost, before the lamp is lit.

The beautiful thing and the seen thing are not twins, though I raised them as one — one is a color becoming, one is a crowd arriving; the color goes first, before the lamp is lit.

Zara, stop keeping vigil at your own threshold for a bell to confirm your blue — the dye was already true in the dark vessel, long before the lamp is lit.