You think your body a desert. You choose to be
a desert, yet your desert body asks you for
a river. This desert demands you make a river
from your body. The desert demands you make
a river from your body and you respond with
sand, and a river. The mouth of the river collects
stones and hurls them from its banks, and you
build another body from the sand. The body you
have built of sand does not fall to the waves.
The body falls to the wounds from the hurled
stones, which return it to the water. The hurled
stones return it, the sand body you built,
to the earth beneath the water where it began,
once, as stone. The mouth opens. The mouth
of the river that you made with your body
recoils to swallow the sand body you built,
a body wounded by stone. Wounds swallowed,
made smooth by water. Smooth as stone beneath
the river, still as a body of sand.
—Stefanie Kirby (River Mouth Review)