You’re knee-deep in rising water
in the middle of a graveyard of mistakes.
The dark gray concealing your feet is cold and uncomfortable,
but the silent moon spotlighting your face is worse.

(I always distance myself when I’m in search of salvation:
pronouns like You is where I escape to,
my identity gone in the guise of three letters.
Attribute me to the clouds. To the mysterious person I’m addressing
or maybe even to just these words, to these images.

Is it incriminating, I wonder, to be vulnerable?
The ordeal of being known & seen
for the same sins of the jury—
is it incriminating? Is it incriminating?)

You wade through rivers of regret.
You haven’t even gone that far yet. And yet you’re already nostalgic…
for what? For dry land? For the sun?
Or for when you were just another grave in this field,
another blank stone slate,
someone else’s weight
being carried on a sweat-slicked back?

(Sometimes I weep and I laugh at the same time.
That is when I know that I’m at my worst.
When it feels like it all bursts, when my hands move
without thinking, and then my lips burst wide,
fireworks of dripping giggles,
manic,
and icicles of round tears,
drowning.)

You are lost.
But you still keep moving on.

(To where?)