the sound of a blade thru water: a love letter toward my kind

.   .   .   .  

Those fucking hands.

Hands the way a sketch artist cuts them.

Like their movement etches a river through the land.

You fucking flow, brother.

Demon.

I think when you sleep god comes to You thirsty.

Bends downs and drinks the syrup from your mind.

I think god covers your navel with their warmpalm, stokes and cradles the fabled beast that lives inside.

I swear to God, god comes to you hungry. Whetted tongue, spoiled wide, caving in

Aware so much of your aching

Those fucking hands, filled with bounty, blessed with sin.

--I

heard a story once.

I heard we came from the water.

(From underneath the water.)

From the molten fucking lava at the burning fucking core of the motherfucking earth, alright?

I heard we came

We came from god

I heard --

I heard a story once, baby I heard we were

Vast and that we were Plenty.

I heard there was one of us, one there at the Beginning, who trapped an army inside of her palm; she reached down or maybe up, coated in armor made from resin, sewn straight on to her skin, stitches sealed with blood (her own blood) of course it was her own blood, what was wheat born from, what did the rice grow on, where did the fruit trees dig down, they came from her blood

good god they

have made you Forget so much.

how can I--

I: heard we were birthed, birthed all at once, birthed from a cavern, pulled from a man.

This man had eyes like honey, hair like iron, skin like stonefruit. He was the best of us. We remember him when we barricade doors against onslaught, sweetheart, we remember him when we press each other down so hard we taste our own teeth in each other’s mouths, when we win and no one’s watching, when we strike our feet down hard enough for the earth to hear us, this is Sound.

Baby we come from Sound.

We come from The Way the Earth Bends Before an Earthquake, we come from Pine, cones that bask in forest fires, craving the licking of the flames, A Wave so Vast, an Avalanche an Onslaught, a Theory a Thought so Loud it is                 Concept

The Truth

Is:

You were loved before the Universe was ever invented. In all your quaking and all your hair. In all your sweating and damned flesh. In every sentence before words and every moan before genesis

I see –

You.

I see a Light Where my Eyes Should Be

a great and terrible harbor, a

dancer, knives out, spinning fury, Jaw Dropped

the thing that you do, that you all do, that we all do

you know

the thing!

Yes you do

that thing where

the whole world lifts up and then resettles upon its bright and twining axis the moment (the very moment) they see you for the first time?

and

You think you are Unwanted? I

Begged for you to be real

Every winter.

the lights would dim and my breath would form frost on the tips of my lips, fingers numb, black tree branches and

nights so cold your cry freezes on its way in

You

were my ember.

You

kept me alive.

This wasted quaking Something

this

Impossible Belief

Those

Fucking

Hands

and

our ancestors, and the bones of the whole world, and the foundational planet, and the god that saw us and wept, because they knew, knew how fearsome we are,

and I am weeping too Juniper I am weeping too Stone, eyes like River body like Slate-grey heart like Orion all jokes and names and terror and hands

I wake up in the terror and I live in the terror

but not of them. not of one of them.

but of

you.

That I’d live for you and let you go by without flowers.

That I’d love you my whole life, die with your names like stars winking my eyes out, and would never have read to you softly

curled the names of our ancestors around your thumbs like honey

wrapped your body in a blanket of grasped hands and

tucked you into your own Existence

so soft, kissed those damn hands

to sleep

-muchmadnessis