Bathing

after Lucia Lorenzi     Today I put my body into a river, upset to find I am only half stone. I tried to live in a swamp once— I love how everything was one colour and the colour of my skin. Two things out of place: the white sky, and all the red birds that saunter airily like tourists. Any vacation I take is the right one: freshwater seems further from the centre, my cellular history sees riches in the sunlight fleeing the surface. My feet slip and I think of grime and green water, how many voices leave my lips, how many times I copy civil dusk for a community of hands and hips. Distance sings a salve for the right skin, and I want to turn my face to the dirt that sloughs through time— it is beyond me and any sweet foreign smell that shrinks, threatens and exalts: my brother’s hair, redolent fish, a black varnish over all.