Translator’s Confession, 3 a.m.

Dear C, I dropped

your sentence in hot water.
I talked to the boil. I said Here

is my thumb for you to burn.

Here is the soft heart
of my hand and my arm and

the nape of my wreck.

I said vapor, just take me.
I’m done burning

with these pages. Being invisible
doesn’t mean a person

won’t blister, doesn’t mean

the blisters won’t fill
with pockets of water

or when lanced the rawest flesh

won’t emerge. First the word
then the murky leak

begins—what another mind
may scrape against

but never skin.