pi & anne

The
secret
letters
uppercase

—Home.

The teacher declares they know. And nothing has ever changed that students rebel without reason, there’s an inkling of a fox-red tickling in my nose and toes to ask them why haiku must be in lowercase—but then I don’t. (I know they know I know they just think they do.)

Who’s in the right, right? Right.

I’ve tried to read a lot of manuals that could shed light on what a haiku needs to devour in order to become. Ripe and lush.

But poems fall in flakes from heavy clouds, leave a trail of lines on my woollen jumper from Sweden. They melt in the warmth. Draw arrows on every window.

The inexplicable allows no certainty.

“Our youth is run-down and lacking in discipline. Young people no longer listen to their parents. The end of the world is near.”

Cuneiform text, Chaldea, around 2000 BC