He carries me across the
golden field. Step by step, we tread
slowly on the sod below, razing
rushes and crops, like some
somnambulists scuffling around with
rusty scythes in hand, singing to harvest
songs until our throats
dry out.

Reaching the river, he puts me down
and starts to scrape the muddy ground.
His fingernails are covered in dirt,
their black edges resemble black
moons black wings of Death’s-head
hawkmoths and black birds.

He digs and he digs, a juggernaut,
crumbling everything into dusts,
his eyes swollen with heat
saltwater drips hot everywhere,
crystallized into pillars and rhyolite rocks.

I watch him quietly, guarding the place
as if to capture this moment of time
into my anthology.

A monody, he sings
and the river comes alive: water pulls back
and forth, dissolving sands with fallen leaves,
its breast warmed from his steady breath,
melting dusts into dreams.

He gasps and time stands still.

Resurfaced is the dark; wrinkled skin folds into
pleats without a single stich. Red, raw, then ripped
into pieces – flesh cut open and
fossils leak out from our lungs:
one photograph,
two hearts of bones.
He wipes the dust off them and
digs them
deep into his pocket
warm.