Wound, I tap your size through the digits of my fingers and thumb;
two round openings enveloped in soft letters like the edge of broken skin.

My body is a repository pregnant with lost lyrics;
countless unfertilised seeds hidden in time.

I think of letters written across lines of separation;
inscribed in ink to fields of battle, borne by horse or ship.

Written under air raid to camps and mud trenches of war;
tapped out in text, scattered to the vistas of escape.

Harbour cradles two openings and waves of sound with arms;
generations of mothers and children looking out to sea.

This is our doorway, the torch that shapes our language;
Your wound is in your leaving while mine is in my waiting.

Meanwhile, in the waiting, doubt has three openings;
a trinity of meaning in these soils of uncertainty.

My doubt brings my body to your harbour to touch your wound;
put DOUBT into capitals and you get four openings.

The female anatomy has eight entrances;
so my body is a design of double doubt.

I now see double doubt as you stand before me;
you my dear man have only seven openings.

But with your wound you have eight;
and I wonder does that make you woman?

And I sense this is origin, like touching a lotus;
like a birth of sound, touching the folds of myself.

And I ponder if my shut mouth (one opening) makes me man;
I reach out my all my fingers to touch your open wound.