I arrive wrapped in typhoon,
blue grey wet blanket
airless and unsettled.
I am adhesive diluted, unable to dry.
When I packed,
I found lost letters behind my bed,
books I never knew I owned.
a realization that to stay is to lose parts of your mind.
A year the naiad shoulders river,
in a day sheds gills,
surfaces, squints, takes flight.
It seems I leave pieces of me wherever I go.
Now the sun shines
in new shades of white.
In its heat, I feel myself changing.
I encounter the silhouettes of foreign objects.
Reflected by snow
the sky cradles my impressions,
a new bootprint for each step.
as if it were mild, papery, and fell to the sky instead.
I will think: I am here, I am sinless,
I will feast on fresh earth.
I will wake fiercely to the snap-eyed Dawn.
I will navigate the trail left on the trodden horizon.
My history here is peripheral.
I am a blown blossom caught in a grate,
roots distant, future unmapped.
concentrating on balance, my grip on the stars.
Poised,
my body is the only globe it knows.
I’ve seen my face in its corolla.
the two of us clutched in sideways motion.
Again the air clears then clings
and memory has become home.
I am sure of few things:
that the seasons make us turn.
Even certainty flees
at the beginning of summer
when winter clothes are stored away.
still dripping, always waiting to be slipped on.