Similarity

A quiet room knows how many steps you’ve
taken in a dream, considering you’ve been
turning to the semblance of an unknown person.

The sound of a river silking is hair singed,
laminating darkened landscape. I still remember
the darkened room and it’s radiance of light penetrating skin.

All my possessions used to fit in a box. Dated. Organized

A clock’s muted ticking is the length of a
prayer, adjacent to arguments of gunfire
in the personal peripheral.

Frozen ground in morning strands
of a newborn’s laughter. Shadows of homes move
through me, and I feel the slight change in degrees.

For once, I’ve been dreaming of the notches on
your doorway that measure the years of your father’s missing.

Every photograph owned has been borrowed. Lost. Outdated

Sometimes, October smells like April, and Ramadi’s
evenings mimic home’s morning. Overhead,
cumuli erase evening prisms, and continue their journey
over plateaus in the distant. Contingency combs memory.

Then leaves before folded blankets beneath a patient.
How do you subjectively paint Morse code?

Suddenly, a mouth speaks Braille. Interruptions of
sleep often happen during a clouded day. How could
these intervals prolong afterimage. Rubble
looking like stones on a riverbed?

Each memory of war used to only be seen in dreams. Burnished. Discarded.

Monty Little is a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts.