slowly i forget how to circle the water,

and unspool like a magician’s trick, like a reservoir.

—i will try and explain. as your child, you held me and we walked around lakes—

grey circles, nipped cheeks like geese in dingy sun,

over long-flooded towns and drinking water. and yes,

when you told me of silk-shattered houses, i cried.

—and to explain, as a child, silk scarves could imitate water—

in sympathy i choose to likewise live as a basin,

flooding hours not built for me. maybe this explains my guilt.

i arrange weeks in tomorrows and yesteryears,

fifteen minutes unfocused. you joke each apocalypse

makes a botch of watches, like butchered self-portraits,

—and to explain, as a child, i remembered myself only when stared in the face—

so i must be apocalyptic. i communicate like beaversticks,

all denseness and mud. someone still drags a path here.

is it me? or were you right to speak of changelings

under reservoirs, in the brittle bedspreads of sediment

swapping children with scraggly birds-nest sticks,

—and to explain i must tell you of a child, my hair cuckoo-wild and unnoticed—

maybe they thatched me from beaver den huts,

maybe they scratched me from graffiti in green growths,

crumpled my focus until canyons filled, crying,

our house overturned as a well, as a grail.

and yes, i am inconvenient. i am muddy with guilt

—and to explain i must tell you i am not what you assumed—

trees snag with silk scarves like that old misdirection.

you harbor my hand, but you were not built for me.

i am more things now than mosquitoes over lakes,

apocalyptic, the endless active pushpins of birds

—and to explain i must confess i am still your child—

so count me the hours as we walk around lakes,

magician’s tricks i easily forget. grant me sympathy.

i am stuck on the sky like grey suns and narcissus—

i circle only myself in the water.