Somewhere where you cannot see them
the dead are making paper bells
and stringing them together, one to the other, via
the last remaining branches in the city,
without touching the birds
or the tiny squares of light
from off the paper windows. At times it seems
when you walk past at dawn
threading your new shadow out in front,
and the old one folding
carefully behind, a word of static
enters the street— touching
the filaments of the gingkoes,
and the smoke-thin bones
in the palms of the leaves. But if
you were to call up to them
or to hold your breath
the time it took to count
to sixteen, they would close
their hands at once, and reach instead
to touch your hair, as if to figure out
which one of you
had happened before. All
that time, their delicate fingers
vanishing in and out of the world,
pressing a seam before folding
the new corners and distances of your life
like white paper.