1.

I don’t love to doubt contingency.

One must allow themselves this mercy, for in the world
We are dissolved. One must allow meaning
To enter, for in the world it is dissolved. One must
Remain open to meaningful encounter, for in the world
It is dissolved.

I set myself upon a path
(I set myself on the meaninglessness of the path).

In this world I encounter you
(we pass each other by).

The inactivity of wind
Presents me
The tenacity of its lawns
And exceeding perfect distances.

I have this preoccupation within relation;
How our appearing in the world has no meaning,
For in the world it is dissolved.

I set myself upon a path in this world
And many waves part
With others coming to take their place
Rushing forwards towards a random foam…

I make my life’s failed address.

The moon rises.
I am most loved and most abhorred.

2.

In preparation for winter, we cleared
The dust into the sky above (abode)…

One is finite
And so our loss is representative.

Each moment rising, inevitably alone
In an excursion of all other momentary relations.

I am reminded of the warmth of your hands
Wandering beneath the inauthentic sun…

Each moment is finite.

3.

My growth indicated to me
That the continuous world of superficiality
Remained an unlikely surplus – that the true green
Of the garden’s leaves surpassed
The world they appeared in – a world, itself
Glazed over with grey
(defeated, unlikely).

One was born inside it.

My growth indicated to me
I had departed from the world I began in.

The landscape of exterior was shedding.
Perhaps the change was seasonal,
Nonetheless,
The departure of recognizable forms
Brought with it a melancholy
I addressed through adornment.

What could exit in so unforeseen a moment?

I bought something beautiful,
I closed my door.
I recessed through ornament.

I thought it was only through such unburdening
that autonomy would appear.

4.

Why do these moments continually damage effort
With their subsequent enclosures?

I perused “what life was”
Or, “what life could be.”

All possibility was a notion accessible to me,
Inaccessible, at the time, to “life”
Or what it “could have revealed.”

The moon rose again and again.

I plan to plant oregano
Once again, on this day.

Nicole Raziya Fong lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Canada. Her work seeks to delimit and reconstruct immaterial ampules of psychic experience, coaxing the incorporeal into inhabiting a more muscular physique. She is the author of OЯACULE (Talonbooks, 2021) and PEЯFACT (Talonbooks, 2019). Her visual and written work has appeared variously in chapbook form, as well as in publications including Social Text, the Capilano Review, filling Station and carte blanche.

Image by marlik saffron @marliksaffron