To Tyler
I stand quietly in a shower hot as pain
Write “why” on the door gray-thick with fog
Feel the water draw lines on my back
I try to feel where I am bleeding out
Watch the “why” dissipate unanswered
I stand in the open air, arms stretched wide
As if I could catch the wind
Quietly, quietly I listen, hear the earth fracture
Or is that the sound of my bones breaking,
My structures fracking, complicating, conflicting
I take a marker black as night across my palm
Then press hard to mar an offending clean white wall
See there – where my heartline crosses my lifeline –
There is the microburst I am standing in
I trace the lines over and again as they lead nowhere new
I stand at the leading edge of a dune
Hold a grain of sand lightly in my hand
Study its fractal inlets and bays
As it glitters in the unforgiving sun
I add my breath to the wind like a moan
I stare at a leaf fluttering in fear of the wind
Watch how light refracts from its surface
In a million shades of grief
Feel it shivering, hear it whine
In the rising wind like a dove
I dip my hands in a sink of water
Slap it cold on my hollow face
Drain the water that absorbs my despair
My reflection distorted as it
Spins clockwise down the drain
I think about how the water would turn counter-clockwise
if I was in Brazil, how maybe pain feels different down there
Where cleansing might take a different turn
How only on the Equator would my heartbreak wash straight down
Without spin
Ginny is a graduate of the Regis University MFA program in Denver. She is an arid land ecologist in Southern California, fascinated with all the creatures of the desert and the complicated and vastly interesting issues of water. She has been published in many venues.
