Amal El-Mohtar

They bring daughters of earth back down to the land of death—but death does not claim them.

I must tell you it gives me great pleasure to think of you reading these words in licks and whorls of flame, your eyes unable to work backwards, unable to keep the letters on a page; instead you must absorb them, admit them into your memory. In order to recall them you must seek my presence in your thoughts, tangled among them like sunlight in water. In order to report my words to your superiors you must admit yourself already infiltrated, another casualty of this most unfortunate day.

Even poetry, which breaks language into meaning—poetry ossifies, in time, the way trees do.