Sahara Gray

and the slowly turning sky

Long strands of light
cling to the grass
feeding memory a fruit
that weaves fabric
between roots and the earth
between each fading footstep
and the slowly turning sky
a fabric that fills fading days
with sunlight and waves

another Night

Smoke is holding its shadow
inside its stomach where
it laughs and disappears

the wind is not afraid
of the sky and bites into
the stomach of smoke

smoke uses its shadow
like a tail to keep from falling

the sky has turned its back
but still pulls the smoke
up off the world
by its shoulders

Words are dying

Words are chewing
through the walls of my home
so that one room spills
into another like a drought
spilling into a drought

Words are chewing
while floods perch on top
of the door frames
and are afraid to step on the floor
without wiping their feet

filling the World

The world is all alone
and I want to talk to it but
silence flows out of me
and drowns everything
like a net of fish
pushing over a stone
or like the kind of blood
that plucks the stars out of the sky
and dissolves them
waiting for breath to wring it out
flooding the lungs
filling the world
like a moon that has lost its mind

not made

We are building footsteps
one by one out of
what we are not
and feeding them to the earth

she asks us where we learned of
what we are not made of
we say from her
or from the clouds we
are not sure

she takes our footsteps
and gives us back our names
our secret mouths