I said, The Chicano shapes identity like an icicle fingering down from the roof’s edge. Pushing the hair back from your face--You said, Yes, translucence freezes about its own boundaries, declaring the noun from the water. I said, The name seeks to root in the arterial cavity; the tendons turn from the blood like foreshadowing.

Drowning adjectives in verbs--I said, Flee through freezing, folded, untangling red. I said, I burned the skin to possess the self in the human. You said, Origins complete themselves in each other. I said, Origin: the rattling of a mirror not quiet firmly fastened to the image of the person before it. You placed the word “margin” in whiteness on the table between us.

Margin is the whiteness in our silence. I said, Difference is already spread between the body and the gaze. You said, We lament the name we give; we give word to find respite from the shallows between. Your iris’ close, black flowers folding toward the silence of their beginning. I place a cup of coffee before you. I said, The noun never sutures to the named body.

You said, An infinity with origin is the speech you foster. I said, I don’t speak Spanish, I am Hispanic. You said, Pan hisses in the center, the Gods rise like bread from the noun; our syntax is the bond to the divinity we are. I said, sin taxes the soul, the name; our grammar is a construct of guilt. You said, teach the children to read the sin. I pick up my coat, empty the pockets of lint, pennies.