Kyoto Protocol
Diana Barnes-Brown
Posted on January 1st, 2017
“…and now your insides are raising an ineffable racket…” –Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Elizabeth Bishop trans.) I finally turned to you and said, I’m scared of what is happening to my body. Oh, person! The week before, I’d held you inside that fear. It was a kind of heat, a realness. The wish to transmit kindness without pain is a form of pain. We had just started to be good at teaching each other words for things: persimmon, catkin, mosaicism, friend. I’d already decided I didn’t want you living in me like that: all that longing, unthrottled cry in the dark. But then, walking back in the pre-dusk, I watched you tremble once with a smallness, …