Sanctuary, I am light within
your innermost organ: whitened

is the heart you assign to me,
and I assume its shape with ease.

Breath comes to one from another,
for soul is this remnant of expulsion

shriveled on body’s outskirts until
elongating it rears up: guest ready

to love like only the shapeless
can. This air is everywhere.

These faces shape themselves
from light swallowed by water.

I feel river in my under-skull,
tissue rinsed by currents eddying

around nerves. Turn your eyes,
apparitions stream from them.

                          *

 Generations of me rush to the shores
where, touched, your loss sinks below

lines of bodies falling, strapped,
feet tied in bunches, where the hurling

sounds reach me here, where safety
has gained remeaning unentirely.

I do not know these sounds
or their origin, only that my life

has spent itself searching
for black clouds thick

 under skin, explosions boiling sky,
poisons mixed like wild colors

of sunset, intoxicating freedom:
I am running, and when I hit

the confines of white-blinded
skull, I make these sounds.

                          *

There are no sounds these bodies make,
there is the great flush cleansing

their eyes and sterilizing their pink
mouths, there are rocks buried that

no one saw: these are the currencies
of river’s gamblings, the game

water plays with the sun: let us trade
blindness for mineral abrasion, 

let us guess at the formulas this world
reactively rearranged: numbers, bonds

flowing like lips between rage
and desire. We can unite, I will pour

myself on top of you, river, and you
will suffocate under ignition.

                          *

I would not trade myself for anything.
Time, your inflation was the mistake:

you submitted to the forceful massage,
now you swell at speeds that distort

my explanation. I am your container,
I nourish you, and I will turn away

in times of anguish. Do not desire me—
desire is your premonition of loss.

Speed from me, child: I am the river
as light unarches.