the gravel in your voice
like grit carried downstream
by the river flowing.
I barley know myself,
but I want to let you wash over me.
I don’t need anything to hang onto anymore.
I just need to keep listening to you.
make me clean and cool,
I’ll happily be swallowed, rushed away,
consumed.

at another time
on a different planet
the same stories happen over and over.
creatures misunderstand each other
and thusly pull each other apart.
children run the world, people suffer,
people lie, people do what they must to survive,
and the sky falls to bits
again and again.
and once more.
I have seen it, I have felt the earth shatter under my hands. I know how it ends. I still try.

please don’t ask me difficult questions,
like what I’m thinking about or
where I’ve been. don’t put the pieces together.
don’t find me out. don’t make me admit how much of a mess I really am.
even you, even a river, even all the time in the world
can’t smooth me out. can’t make me whole.
I won’t ever be round. won’t ever be sea glass
or the full bright call of the gull. I tried once.
I tried to be good. like really truly good. I’m just not.

and please
don’t ask me what I think of the world.
in that way, I am entirely too much like my father.
bitter and inconsolable and mostly useless.
I don’t want you to know how I see.
who colored my world, who I listened to
as a child. who I venerated. who I believed.
just let me listen to you talk.
god I hate my thoughts,
I want your thoughts to fill me up instead.
I want to borrow your wholeness
just for a moment.
I won’t be greedy,
I just want to know what it’s like.