I'm Diana Khoi Nguyen and I'm reading "Triptych" from my book Ghost Of.  Two years before his suicide in 2013, my brother cut himself out of all the family photographs which hung in the house of our childhood home.  The poems work in that space and also around the space and it's a way for me to feel I can reach towards him.

Triptych
With eyes closed
he waits for his body to do the same,
a fistful of grains, rice let go from the hand of a cymbalist;

first the rainstorm then trio of crickets, 
a stream then a trickle like someone
who has the hands of a mother or father to guide him
but the house is empty,
he is emptying out every hour,
all hours before his death he is dangerously close to living,
his body is warm, his mind cool;

what are the tricks for warming;

he no longer feels the watch against his wrist
he no longer feels a wrist
he no longer


what may exist between appearance and disappearance,
between sound and silence,
as something that is nearly nothing-
slow music, quiet music, spare music-
of sound of form I fell asleep tonight
after feeding us both it was hard to think of you cold
it was hard to think you think it was hard
to think of you it was h...ard to think;

while I slept soundful the wind howled and whet its whistling teeth,
it has s....ound but no form,
what has a form but no sound?
there is no sound for everyone
not eve...ryone has a sound
there is no sound for there is no sound there for everyone is there

anyone between the sound and the silence, some solitary figure ambling along the l...oop, no sound, no sound in which the performer is silent,
he is a point depart...ing, no sound no sound overtaking sound to the verge of vanishing, n...o sound, not one,
no one silhouetted against the empty scored
no duration to m...ark but still a space to occupy, 
an occupation;

tonight I fed you first then mys...elf then fell asleep;
we have departed from the cage,
that is not a space we occu...py; 
a sister who is dreaming becomes a sister in another sister's dream
momen....tarily forgetting that music is playing-
something startled me,
a voice in the room

I thought was empty- did you jump over,
did you jump back, over, and back did...
you jump did you jump back did you;
over here I stretch the replay across the y...ear
and longer, it keeps me alive
it keeps me alive it keeps alive it keeps me...

alive it keeps me alive it keeps me alive it keeps me alive
it keeps