One day, will it go away? The river I feel for you. One day, drifts away 3 more, and the current pours – thick as tree roots, ropes, gnarred and nourishing tubes, a far contrast to all the time I’ve laid hovering, figmented death (a loss of color), a hand you can’t shake from your shoulder. She drips, a dangling drawcord, this same spot, eerie center, now – not cold, but a natural temperature. A river you pour – hovering – heart-high – arms splashed in mist – to me, a gentle kiss. From which we branch 3 more.
11/1/19
Missed messages, skimmed surfaces – like cutting foam off the top, a subtle sip of dad’s beer (behind backs). We’d rather be hiking, without service, cell-phone-free, you can’t reach me. A politicians answer, no strings attached, don’t string me along. One way streets, carved groves in the land, your hands, snapping branches, bushwacking, twigs snapping, a single lamp through the trees, she cries out to me, high pitched - push alerts pulsing, keep out, cell-phone tower trespassing, mailed ticket violations –
Ping! How’d they find us?
Tunnels shooting - mixed messages.
09/18/19
Earthen features, mini islands to climb – we find! –
by ascension; queendom!
An oyster of a world with you - unturned, I kneel to see a mystery
you hold – out to me –
a tiny thing turning
be tween
– fingertips. A bird soaring over, you count the beat of his wings…
Flash / flash / flash of orange (you tell me twice) “it’s a flicker.”
To him, we must be quite the pair – crouching to look at something unseen, heads cocked towards one and another.
Open necks mean,
“I can take more of you, I want to receive.”
Receive heartbeats and shivers, gestures and whispers.
I am making an altar of disbelief at your feet; shells and stone, dried bits of driftwood. Trailing - a line – forming a circle, encircling imprints – our handprints kissing. Sandy hands and hair mixing.
Dancing, you’ve come to fasten gleaming seaweed ribbons to my hair, trailing down my back – a line - forming a spine,
We turn to face – new terrain, original classrooms boiling up from earth and spiting wild shapes - unfurling life (beyond equation).
Growth structures beckon us with awnings and webs of rooms –
The walls inside are plastered
- our handiwork catalyzed - into constellations of decay and bloom.
I feel like bowing, “I can, I will, I do”
AHNIKA WOOD, Photography Credit: Karina Rovira, Shaye Garrigan