Breathings
Over things
reign the eyes.
Over eyes,
language.
So, Paul,
the river you chose to drown in
does have a name.
Tourists continue to sail it, origin to imagined destination.
Lovers slip their hearts through the steel arms
of each other like some unshakable bridge.
There has been a time flowers papier-mâchéd its surface
and the city’s unaging shadow blackened the water
and, forgiven, the blazing orange lanterns of death
that meant the end
or beginning
of a generation.
You were not the first to bind your feet to yesterday’s anchor.
You were not the first to believe a river merely water.
You were not the first to relearn to breathe in language,
intolerably permanent,
some dead thing resurrected by the color you’ve planted in the eye.