Leslie Harrison

For I have loved the blade with all my crippled with all my awkward soul loved it for the shine sheen for the ease and grace of doing what it was made to do for I have loved the stubborn womb its beloved intent have loved the hope and then learned to love the lack for I have loved the water the way it comes to me comes for me in all its liquid mystery for I have loved what the water loves its myriad vessels sky basin runnel channel and vein for all it claims and contains for I have loved its muscular flex its rise coil and fall so like Leviathan's mighty desperate heart for I have loved Leviathan for being only for being exactly what god hated and what he made for being water's own knife this wild unholy blade

One day I wake I walk     forward         carrying a narrative carrying an end a hole    ten years deep and sleep has made for it           a lid fragile thin plastic wrap                          a skin graft         a patch inside the hole is dark and full of stars is dark and full of scars this body grows a garden of badly barely healed feelings I mean skin I mean go ahead touch me now for I am wild

That this is the morning in which nothing much that the sky is still there and the water dresses accordingly that only at night does the water rest vanish from sight that the stars are too small too far to register there that all our names too are writ invisibly on water that abiding requires more hope than I can possibly acquire that hope is not a thing with feathers that hope is a thing with a fist a thin crust sketched over oceans that hope is what despair uses for bait come in hope says the water's fine that hope is the blood with which you write letters that start dear sea dear ocean stop asking so fucking much that hope is a telegram delivered by men in pairs men in uniform a telegram that says missing stop that says once again presumed lost stop

I said love because it came closest said leave because you did we do this peeling off each from each each from suddenly other said come back but meant don't go I said dead and meant every one of those instances of vanishment how the dead swim away from us in time their tide their closed wooden boats I said tide but tide was never right said tide because we have no word for that kind of unforgiving away I said tether when I meant anchor when I meant stay but when I said stay one thing I meant was against confusion against yet another loss I meant two-faced Janus January's god of fallen gates of trying to look both ways and when I said farewell I meant again don't go but it was too late I was here in the hall this tunnel full of mirrors glass and strange made-up faces and when I thought funhouse I meant its opposite I meant this rusty carnival town the men so sad they paint their smiles in place they paint their faces white paint their eyes wide and full of crying

I would drive to your grave but your grave is the crash the froth foam pebbles small rocks the sand smoothed soothed each rising each leaving tide you lie in the ocean the water in the waves your home the stern the back the wake of a boat those curled white lines of leaving I would visit your grave but your grave is a single blue afternoon of passing isles the green and granite shores I would come to your grave but your grave is the fire oh mother it is cold tonight and I have no heart for this burning for the fine sift of ash which is all that comes back all that comes after I would visit your house but your things are missing are missing your touch as your eyes failed I brought you lights and I would see again that brightness I would drive to your grave but I am your grave your marker oh mother I am your stone