Apostolic Syntax

You say silence is the oldest language—
I answer with breath.

Stone remembers
what language forgets to bless.
Accents christened at driftwood’s altar.

Digging toward raptured bone,
syntax breaks: salt.
Pink mouth unspells itself—

Piha’s sea
closes its black-lips
and listens.

Topher Shields is a poet from Aotearoa New Zealand. His work appears or is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, The Shore, The Bangalore Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Tangled Locks Journal, The Dewdrop, Half and One, Hip Pocket Press, and The Rough Diamond Anthology. Topher’s writing engages with silence, ritual, and inherited fracture, and he is currently developing a full-length manuscript. He lives in Auckland.