Water never thought it would come to this,that for all she’d done,she’d die if fate was up toLike asking a burninghouse to put its fire out with more wood,the world asked the ocean caught on fire to keep dousing.Blamed her for moving in circles,slovenly, hoping for someone to pitch inlike she had done for every living thing.No one said a word to the undersea pipelineflaring like a cigarette dropped from the bed,dancing with a white ash handkerchief untilparade trash on the street forgotanybody had homes, memories.Three ships spray waterover the wound in the middle of the whale’s road.The colorless rainbow rushes like dolphins fleeing,a tangle of leashed dogs soaring away from avalanchefor hours. Into the shining red, white crystals,crackling magma, dinosaur eye, vanishing burnt marshmallow,melting rings of Saturn, wounds whose burns cannotbe quantified. When the fire finally stops, the phantom flamesscald. Water burns like painwhen the anesthesia wears offas your legs stiffen with exhaustion you never saw cominghaving been lied to by day 2 after the knife,in cartoon thought cloudsof morphine saying, You’re getting out of here early!Only you hadn’t yet faced death, the loss ofyourself, the way everyone liked watching.
