SHADOWS IN SIBERIA ACCORDING TO KAPUŚCIŃSKI
Are upright –
cast not by sunlight but by frozen breath:
we breathe
and are enveloped in an outline
and when we pass,
this outline stays suspended, not tethered
to our ankles
as our sun-shadows are. A boy was here –
fantastically dressed
against the arctic frost like an heirloom glass
in bubble wrap –
he has disappeared into the portico
of himself. Not even Alice,
with her knack for finding weaknesses
in the shellac
of this world, left so deft a calling card.