A Blind Spot, Awash

And if I give up on consequences
is that despair
or passion? I can’t protect
myself from either. The lantern swinging
bearing down, pressing the dark
to a sliver
of shade at the edges of my field
of vision. My body alight in
the seat of this question and indecisive—
if to be moved through,
de-throated,
the groove in the thoroughfare.

I felt reduced waking up

crumpled by the water, an amniotic curve
along the shore. My only shape
was having been carried,
left at rest. And everything
I thought I could lose—
when I followed the rushes back, resurfaced.

Wings tucked just so or grasses threaded
gently from ear to ear, rewiring their small
skulls. I understood the first mercy
of diving is blindness, those parachutes blooming
the drag that yanked me back
to my body, almost touching my lungs.