You bear a tide line, an invisible tattoo, midriff – 
the highest point 
where sorrow touched and receded at last 
like a closed room during a flood

But you cannot hold people and water
too tightly in your hands for long
They slip through your fingers. Like death, like desire
There is a liquidity in all

Water and people are averse to boundaries of a closed palm
Like a dissent, like love,
water passes you by wave after wave 
overhead 
like a failed appointment
Snails, moss, water ferns, fish tails, broken pebbles rub 
your eyelids and little finger 

like life’s small pleasures
You and the river change your names and places, 
step by step
You lie down from horizon to horizon, alone
Like a piece of broken sky waiting 
to be taken home
Familiar faces sprout around
Like bridges, towns. They touch your heart

and take a handful of you like thirsty travelers
before they finally depart
Did you want anything more? Are you sure? 
But again, rivers and people do hum, 
burble and gurgle and cry and ripple and splash 
and slosh and roar and rock and roll 
 
in the watercourse that you generally follow 
down the slopes in love 
or in a fall 
to finally reach an equilibrium 
for a lost cause

No shape, no soul, no ferry, no boat, no present, 
no fate, no divinity, no past, no existence,
no meaning, no air, no direction, no thought
You become a waterbody, a running whole

and finally dissolve into yourself
like a lagoon of coarse salt