this is the land where everything is coated in dust
here, lips go dry waiting for something to taste
travel north, wander to meet the aurora
and if you go
won't you return to tell me
what it was like to have so much water
it spilled over every rooftop
and made atlantis out of suburbia

I have often dreamt in liquid color
lurid with motion, I’ve woken up dizzy

******* the tear 
in lullaby time

tempted to test it’s fragility

wiping the sleep from my eyes

to find them sealed shut

I’d extend one arm, brushing the greyscale
unable to escape what I couldn’t see

“this is blindness”, I thought

as the world shrunk to a sliver of sense

all crunch-sounds and sandpaper jaws



I fashioned myself armor made of the transparent melodies

chanted by nameless birds, unidentifiably perched 

on the other side of my window

it didn’t fit right

I had misinterpreted my body

the fabric clung too tightly to my skin and then jutted out

like a Christmas parade

I can’t remember if it was only a story, but north of here

they fastened wheels to their feet, to roll over pavement
what would it be like, to glide over miles

or grow gills, and escape this
stale air
I could live a dream, in the north
I could make a hero
of the river