Watermarks

SoulReserve

I’ll let water tell the story of my hometown.

water seeps from the body of a woken

glacier, dense and sparkling–arrives. feeds

dry, cavernous mouths of mountain-dwellers, leaps

into throats

           from cupped, shaking hands of thinning streams.

then water carries monsoon silt rising algal bloom

throbbing veins into forgotten cities–oil

-slick and plastic, afloat. this memory of water

is found settled along the soft edges of my heart, its wetness.

then water leaves from drought to drought. scraping air

on rough stone. swollen mirages waver. unforgettable,

watery veins on skin-of-earth shimmer, parched. carrying with it

the weight of the sky pressed down on the cracked

- brittle,

bed of the lake, or river, or brook… 

I forget which. when season calls, I move with the water. willing, against a leaning

column. I read hidden lines inside scant reflections, trace curious alcoves

that rise and fall like the sound of my name. barefoot on the

broken shore.

and water leaves. pressed from my body into puddles

of sweat. perspiration glistens momentarily, then vanishes

into vapour. precipitates in storm-cloud bursts. gathers,

inside excavated hope, but I

leave,

exhaling. inhaling–filling up expanding lungs

with a blue, bottomless ocean                    of separation.

and when I have left, water still dry on my tongue, body

breaking. remnants speak like sound through a conch–of worlds under-

neath and drowning. washed out and faded places from our once

memory,

that never did belong to anyone.