“I want you to leave your body now” he tells me

his voice not so much hypnotic as reaching

for the hypnotic

but I leave it anyway sitting in the upright chair

of the windowless room

for a place higher up that’s not quite

the windowless room—

though I’m aware of my body’s particular kind

of breathing down there

dressed in my favorite shirt and somehow

up here I’m dressed

in that same shirt which is I feel suddenly

becoming very important

its color pertaining to a quiet hue of knowing

I can’t quite explain

and I do not think about the money I have

given him the man who is speaking

but I’m looking instead down on a yellow

kitchen in Swindon

upon a tiny remembered body I have found

crying or about to cry

in little white shorts and there is carpet

streaked with blue

and there is the noise of a terrible thing

that is happening

and there is summer outside with its

other children

“He doesn’t understand does he”

says the man

“he is so young” and I understand the shirt

that he will have to grow through

all of the terrible things to fit

I can feel my body now

filling up the space inside its soft and

lavender-scented cotton