alignment

I stepped into a river to trammel translucence to shape a heart

to clench a hand, to trouble something perhaps rougher than sand,

craving the scar-fleck of unwary growth, something nurtured against

itself, myself, hungering for a pearl not quite born in water but petaled

in something saltier and more vibrant, more rhythmic—like the twitch

of a tongue yet not meant yet to be tasted, opened or swallowed—like

the palm of the hand, lined and shy and curved, drawn in against its own

swell and wave, tensed against what it cannot absorb and cannot, of itself,

ever let go. The river became a tissue thin box of currents around my feet.