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It’s raining up the river, each drop a tiny shoe
on ceramic, stepping closer—
but that’s not precise either. With the second
storm, baby frogs and toads rise from the earth
to ease into that space their bodies can easily claim.
A puddle is all it takes for creation. How the frogs
peed in our hands, a small liquid like sweat.
As I grew, I didn’t want to catch them anymore.
He wrote to say he was coming home—Thomas,
my first crush, now no more than a cross.
It is strange to count the days until my birthday.
Or number the rainbow trout, the cans of half-empty beer
forgotten in sand bars, since our last trip to the lake.
I’ve steered this boat between all
the dimensions of blue. There is a difference
between silence and quiet, you know.
In this absurdity of water, these mosquitoes
thick on the current then disappearing, I throw myself
to the aftermath, and listen. There is a buzz in the river
that remembers. And it is in that space,
the gap between hardwoods and bottom river
silt, that I whisper our names.
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