the stream outside keeps worrying the same stones

licking them clean, or gnawing them down

all night the earth hangs its mouth open

rinsing it out,

and the water is swollen

with something much more real

i listen from the floor

the house smells like damp and detergent

i imagine myself a tired animal,

low to the ground,

ribs showing through the reeds and slow,

patient swallowing

my body feels borrowed when my chest fills

the way soil does

slow, and heavy, and full to choking

if grief has a season, it is this one

when the air stings with a sweetness rotted,

when something cries out between each breath,

when what falls is also fed

im asleep before she walks through the door,

sloughs off her soaked skin,

tracks mud all over my carpets

im not good at endings

im even worse at beginnings

if i call the rain cleansing enough,

it might start to be true

i dream of kneeling in the muck

where the earth smells coppered and hungry

press my thumb into the dirt,

ribs showing through the reeds,

watch the water pool and be drunk