day 19: dropped

Special note about this one: I’m a day late here so I admittedly went digging around on my computer looking for some quick inspiration and found this. It was half-finished, and was meant for the Day 5 “golden shovel” prompt from NaPoWriMo 2014, where the last word of every line spells out a different poem. I had bitten off more than I could chew at a time when a surprise event had sucked all the energy from my body and brain, so I left it. I’m glad I could come back to it.

The poem the last words spell out is “I Will Wade Out” by e.e. cummings. It’s a long one.

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You never sought anything but i
and i was never meant to have a will
You wade
all the way out

I was meant to till
the soil my
feet were rooted in. Your hands, my thighs
show that the things our parents wanted for us are
boxes of photos, pictures of paintings, steeped
in dust and unmentionable dreams. Because who in
their sensible mind would divulge the location of their burning
barn skeletons instead of going to their relatives' graves with flowers

You never even sought out I
and I have my will
and I will with no more hesitation take
me to the beach-less lake, the
deceitful waters licking at my blinded ankles, the sun
like that man in
the park on the bench, content to watch my
falling down, chasing after my running mouth

she won't interfere, and
I plug my nose, even though I know it will still hurt, and I leap
but you pushed me, and surfacing, I try to sink my feet into
the cragged underside of your parents' cabin's dock, the
algae telling me no. You knew when the time was ripe
and like friends again, you, laughing, sent me sailing into the air

simply Alive

I asked, later with
the bottle corked, the conversation with your uncle closed
what is it about our eyes

you smiled, devil, and said nothing as we walked back to
the cabin. Not so much a dash
as a saunter; not so much a struggling against
what I wanted, but letting my vision of the lake be sealed in darkness

an envelope shut in
a window left open. I shied away from the
moonlight on the water, sleeping
but you hushed my worried eyes and held the curves
that held me together. And of
all the nights, my
rest did not fall easy on me next to your body

as your arm hooked me in for the night. Shall-
ow I knew I would enter
shallow I would emerge the next day. My fingers
curl tightly around steering wheels staring down canyons of
sharp turns, up and over, far cry from the smooth
of the enclosed climate I left. With mastery

I thought I left, with
a warm blue heart. Months later you must’ve thought chasteness
in the words I sent. There was no sign of
you for years. I never asked for sea-girls

but only a place to swim. I had my Will
and i
had found complete
in my fall from the apogee, in the
legible mystery

for once. I sang in my heart of
coming to earth, my
buzzed bones glowing up translucent flesh

You had found what you’d sought but I
had grown a will
and watched stems and leaves rise

from soil. After
parachuting into the ocean, a
text was all it took to stop those repeated nights, thousand
seconds/minutes/years

because you’d no longer catch my lip, so stopped lipping
in all forms. You sent no flowers

in congratulations. And
I underhanded on into the river anyway, it set
along south to the ocean and my
heart that had room for you here, and then there, closed teeth
jaw barred in neutral in
the sunset. You dropped it from the
plate as soon as the flavor changed; silver
moment in my throat when I see you next of
of-of-of who knows when? When the
mountain no longer shades the moon