NaPoWriMo #1

I believe the nervous twitch in your fingers,
as you sit there, hands neatly folded.
There is nothing like a polite truth; it seethes
and elbows and shouts, paints garishly on walls.

The streets outside are drowned in water,
dirtily entombed, reefs of fences accumulating
trash and silt, makeshift currents carving out their paths.
I don't know how many graves the water makes.

I see the claims time has made on your thinning wrists,
your watery eyes. I don't trust them.
We are not your bodies, you and I.
This is not what you have sown.

The silence, thick and stupid, is stretched out between us.
We are divided like continents. My words
mean as much to your ears as the sound of an unanswered telephone,
or the cries of a stranger's baby.

It's the wailing truth:
The flood waters will not recede for me.

These visits to you have tightened my grip on this world.
I horde memories, stack them up in my basement,
fill my bathtub with conversations and sunset.
I look in the mirror often, flex my fingers, grit my teeth.

But I have not yet furled my dreams.
I don't ask for much resurrection, anymore.
Only enough to fill up a knapsack, or a purse, or a basket;
to pray over and break and share until my hands lie empty.