Spillways

..

Take me down to the river, we say
and we mean we want to be washed
clean, freed from all this pain and
salt and shame. Un

-stain us from these words we’ve
said, these lies we’ve spread,
these things we’ve pledged
under the duress of

time and tide and the end
-less tirade of our own skin.
We begin with the tributary
of truth, tribulations

loosed to these raging waters
of our own making. We’re for
-saking nothing more than
our own souls and

nothing less than each bright
dry thing. Fling them in and
watch them float, bloat them
-selves on sacred flow,

slow in their own undoing.
We cast stones and hope
they’ll hold, grow old as
we wait for morning.

We shed tears, years,
baptize our own faces; trace
these blue veins to
a place we can rest.

 

 

 

..
prompted by poets united. 

 

 

 

 

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