The whole city is drowning and

only you I hold.

 

Nails puncturing skin. To wake you.

I shake you. 

 

I can pretend that you are still warm

with a beating lung in your quiet hull. 

 

I can pretend the flood never came,

and it was all snow. 

 
2. And then the water caught me 

 

And then the water caught me, a crumple of soaked red leaves.

Skin pinched with searching debris. A washed up thing.

 

The lake’s fingers combed the hair to spread a thousand tentacles long,

blue lips with no prayer.

 

The bonfire warmed me with seeds to nourish what saved 

beneath my body. I breathed bonfire seeds mourning,

 

begging, you are too painful as buried bone.

Come back, join my own. 

 

And then the water called me, time will pattern your way back home.

Swim loose to let an acre come sooner. Let your breath slow.

 

If you speak my name, use what I gave to the water,

as it caught me going under. 

3. Dream Song

 

A city underwater mutating with algae feathered fingers 

cast by currents undulating / like gills in-between brick 

archways for sleepwalkers / with trains of bubble steam 

rumbling through the gap in-between. Last night it took 

me to the edge of the dark / where dead matter of fire and glass

crumbled in my palms.

 

I thought I swallowed whole the night / with bones of 

glowing amber and an amethyst tongue. I throttled a

dove down my throat to take me back again / but it 

only sang me the song of Ariel’s whisper / washing me 

to shore / the sand I played in when I was young.