Prose Poems Inspired by "Edge"

Perhaps beneath a full moon or perhaps beneath a dark canvas that has grown tired of illuminating a witchlike character who we all know must be there, watching, the self perceives the body that has sheathed it for what seems to be centuries. A wake in spite of the breaths. Wake for oneself and awake all at once. The lungs’ continued engagement with air, a sort of mandatory ritual, laughing at its own reflection in a funhouse mirror. There was, for so long, a march through impossibly still airs. Air, like a fabricated aura, clung to but never seen, in the way we never truly see our noses but are only conscious of their presence. Or, for that matter, the way we never see our eyes (unless in a “mirror”) but listen with them, touch with them, “see” with them. To wonder what it’d really mean to stay beneath the water’s surface with one’s mouth open. To wonder if the march was always backwards, if the feet, with minds of their own, needed to feel what pure, dark air crackles after edge.

---Emily E. Goff