I wish to flow, to pour,
to be seamless,
as the raven hair of a drowning woman;
it stays on the surface
but my head is beneath the water —
I am choking on my own cries.
I wish to be fluid and gentle as the sunlight
as it guts me open —
it looks immaculate with the knife
But I am the stones in a dead river,
the lump in my throat that doesn't quite fit
the size of my mouth;
I have swallowed too many suns
but the water floor still looks too dark,
I am a silhouette coughed up in the dawn,
the loch ness monster,
the still waters,
the body that goes nowhere but ashore.

I want to shed my skin,
pour it all and run dry —
be lighter than the sun.
I want to grab the god of time by his neck;
and out there,
Ophelia is still picking flowers,
humming to the fragments of sorrowful song,
her dress flows like a quiet brook;
it leaves only her sins in the water —
like a snakeskin in the Garden.
it leaves nothing but her sins —
they flow as she walks away.

Here,
in the middle of who I am

everything flows but me.

Choking is the last thing I remember.
The sun, the last thing I see.