There is no grace left in black water. It has lost everything electric. When I tell you I can't do this anymore I am actually telling you I am a river at the place it meets the sea. I am speed and depth and escaping. I am water and the length it takes to travel from here to anywhere and I can't ocean myself anymore. Grief has tiny fish bones that splinter in wave over wave over whomever I love. I want to think about the sky. I want to think about light splitting over mountains into blood sunsets and the breeze held tenderly by the dying sun. I want to see the storm coming and a bolt of lightning strike a cliff. I want the cliff to explode, go howling into flames and remind me I'm capable of love. I can love you as light waves. I can love you like resin and hot air against the curve of your arm. Think about light preservation and then these words and then nothing at all. I want to step out of language and into a tall grass field on fire and watch the flames gnaw through so much dirt. Think about whirlpools and then light traps and especially moths. Think about a sky electric with what you don't have. I don't have to be my most difficult dream. I want to extinguish the dream and put your body in its place. There is stillness at the core of any explosion. I think we can be that stillness.

I've walked for hours in the dark to arrive miles away in the snow.

The snow that pressed to my mouth like a wound and I couldn't feel.

I couldn't feel my lips or fingers while the night around me wept.

While it wept through the tall pines for something I knew before.

Before it all moved into my open hands then dissolved like snow.

I've walked for hours to arrive like a night with no barriers but snow.

The snow how it felt like my thoughts that I couldn't get through.

Get through and into a pattern like day and night day and surrender.

The surrender of trees, snow and blood, moonlight and the rest of it.

The surrender of distance cut into smaller pieces melting a little more.

A little more every day in the dark and angry wind wiping up the snow.

I've walked for hours calling out to myself in the dark to come home.

Come home to the self I knew before everything was covered in snow.

The snow that pressed to my mouth like the truth and I couldn't feel.

I couldn't feel the slow hours moving toward me and eager to touch.

To touch my fingertips and lips like anything alive and trying to live.

Trying to live a little longer in the world on skin and inside my mouth.

My mouth split from the dead trees on the hills that are covered in snow.

The snow that pressed to my mouth like a wound and I couldn't feel.