We can’t feel how fast we’re falling because
we’ve been doing it all our lives, falling and
spinning like maple keys unlocking and
unlocking the next moment and the next,
prismatic as a torrent and its corresponding
rainbow, its mist-dwelling spectrum,
ignorant mortal, shimmering and illusory.
The river’s love is metered, is accentual-
syllabic, is travelling light, no dead
weight, no passive detail, mostly illegible
music. To be alive is to be drenched
over and over with the same water
fallen from the sky, from your lover,
from the hose—to be a god is to be
the water, heavy, to destroy us or
serenely disdain to. This is my angel
costume: sunburnt tongue, mouth light
with thirst, sunstarved hands and in them
a stringed something to pluck, a haltingness,
a hesitance, a caught breath, another
list missing most of itself, tulle skirt,
fairy wings, faceted plastic, crushed
velvet, keys to nothing—and then
of course, the nothing, the nothing
itself—my crowning glory—the hot-
glue-gunned rhinestones of each and every
singular, precious, sparkling nothing.
