Phonology of Shadows by Ottilie Mulzet

Phonology of Shadows
A Shadow moved suddenly from its Place
in the corridor that led Away
to a Staircase that gave no Issue
onto any Human World—
the Shadow moved abruptly
as is their wont
when upset or distressed, when having
an urgent message to impart
only that, having forgotten our Tongue, and we
having never learnt theirs
the Words are lost, bygone,
surrounded by their own eddies
of Oblivion, and the form
without contours would
tell us, only its sudden
desperate gesture speaks
and we glance over, seeing nothing, and
after a careless scribbled note
the Shadow entombed in its
dead, half-remembered syllables
like the invented code of a secretive child
in which there are no copulas.

About the Poet
Ottilie Mulzet has been published in The Missing Slate, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Muse, Morphrog, and Sand Journal, among others, and will be forthcoming in the Beloit Poetry Journal.