Surface

When I could walk on water, I dreamed of land.
When the land dreamed of me, I knew it.
Behind my eyelids, volcanoes muttered smoke, grasses

bent away from wind like saltwater
from my fingertips. Black clouds set music
to storms. Could I hear in each boom all songs

sung at once? Or none? Or my own voice? 

I questioned breezes often and often
they questioned back with echoes (echoes spoke

only when spoken to). Sometimes I dreamed land,

inch-by-inch, materialized over the sea’s ledge,

opened by the sky’s lifting, one actor

enacting stillness. An island waiting for an echo.

The world was falling—falling from the sky,
from the edge of whatever first fell from whatever sky

first picked away at my grip, or gripped it hard until it died.

I dreamed I couldn’t walk on water, but I could.
Salt was a scent, soil a superstition. Flakes of foam

filled me up like a wave. I crested and I crashed.

In that dream, I fled. In that dream, I followed.