Letter by Joseph Fasano

Letter
Joseph Fasano

Tonight, as you walk out
into the stars, or the forest, or the city,
look up
as you must have looked
before love came,
before love went,
before ash was ash.
Look at them: the city’s
mists, the winters.
And the moon’s glass
you must have held once
in beginning.
That new moon
you must have touched once
in the waters,
saying change me, change
me, change me. All I want
is to be more of what I am.

MARGINALIA

1.
I used to look up and ask for things—signs, forgiveness, clarity. I still do. But this time I try to listen, as if a sea of stars might answer me in its own language.

2.
Of course I want grow into myself the way a tree leans toward light, slowly, without knowing where it ends.

3.
Of course I want and want.

4.
At some point I learned there’s a difference between wanting to be new and wanting to be more of what you already are. What I fool I was, being young. So much I didn’t know. I thought transformation meant erasure. I thought becoming better meant becoming someone else.

5.
What if the work of oneself is to deepen, not depart? To remain rooted in the body, in the wound, in the history—and ask for more depth, more light, more truth.