Cipher

Cipher

In an obscure corner of the gallery, a graphite portrait,
smaller than a page torn from a dime-store novel,
waits against the shadowed wall for anyone's eyes
to make it real. The artist's bio says that
after the second war in Europe, he spent seven years
in an asylum before re-entering the world.
He spent the next twenty-three stacking empty boxes
in a warehouse during the day and, at night pacing
a one-room cold-water flat behind diaphanous curtains
that shielded its single window like a thin strip of gauze
over an open wound.
Then, when the neighbors complained of a stench,
the landlord found him decomposing on the floor,
disappearing amidst a legacy of frenzied faces
penciled onto ten thousand paper scraps, each sketch
an echo of his image pleading not to be erased.