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in the next chapter, let me be water

barbaraturneywielandpoetess

April 18

filled with the colours of sunrise blinking in your eyes

being totally transparent in my want

i want to be uncontained, unbodied, unselved

broken

into particles

part of everything being no thing, e.g

part of gin and tonic with a bleeding slice of ice and lemon

part of meaty fatty soup clarified with apple cider vinegar

ecetera ecetera, in the next chapter, let me be water

i have a longing to be lifted into and thicken into mist or cloud

veil your skin and sight from the hottest harshest sun or then

rumble-bumble into purple; blues bursting onto thirsty earth

breath drinking into the dryness of our souls only to pee out

whole oceans and in little rivulets quivering with minute fishes and mollusks

seas waving with weeds and sands and, well, waves that crash themselves out

i have a hankering to be blood and spit and tears; drainage systems dammed

and spilt and spoilt and filtered into clear chicken broth that settles stomachs after illness

i have to be shattered, showered over your skin, your hair in rose sage and juniper scents

rising up in fragrant steams to fill your lungs and nostrils like lust

i have an inclination to be wrung from your laundry, your hands twisting suds down gutters

i want to be in love with dolphins, with seals, with nymphs, with sweat dripping down your sporty back, with sugar sap and lapping tongues, with desolate fens and deserts

i want to be dews dropped on a medicinal forest, to be lost, desiccated, seeping a secret you must dig for, a well, well… to be a puddle at your feet in honey coloured dirt, a spurt....wait

is this too much to know?

i could drown you, you know

only to birth you anew

only you and i would know what water knows

that everything and nothing flows

to us and away in waves

and so it comes

and so it goes

btw

april 18 2024

The White Hart, Somerton, Somerset, UK

https://www.napowrimo.net

Day 18 prompt: write a poem in which the speaker expresses the desire to be someone or something else, and explains why. Two possible models for you: Natasha Rao's "In my next life let me be a tomato," and Randall Jarrell's "The Woman at the Washington Zoo."