Silencing water

you hold a beer bottle up like a flute of light
on a rooftop in bedstuy under a scattered noon sky
your hand plummets the concrete with enough might
to uproot a tree from the ground the bottle does not break
yet something inside you does you keep dreaming of losing teeth
you are running water a faucet that runs all night flooding
into day you run & your heart quickens
you long for summer skin for the sun to brown & freckle your
body you once took a lover who knew how to unmute you
now you get high in the woods & cry listening to songs
for dreamers who have forgotten how to dream too soon
you have misplaced your reflection in a light too big for your
hands so it swallows you whole instead you take to your room
to your unmade bed to the sound of grief sharpening your lungs
then you hear water silencing itself for the first time
& you want to believe in believing again realizing the largeness
of its silence & your own the silence you have belonged to
for so long leaving your body blanketed & barbed

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