qarrtsiluni

I fell from the cliffs to the sea
of arms to the foam of hands

to the spaces of cities like cities
could ever do something, could

ever be more than a story or store
where we waited through winter

for a certain street vendor
and stood at the edges of statues

and sculptures and pointed
at water, the shape of water

in the place of a place we once
took a taxi through patterns

of people, through movements
of bodies, the firework nights

like a furnace above us,
the clang and rattle of hours

like a river, the hem of a river
that remembers the swish

of the cliffs, of the hands,
the falling, the feeling

of falling, of finding
there’s nothing

but nothing beneath.

by Tim Lockridge

Read by Beth Adams — Download the MP3