There she goes. She was falling through sky pudding and pain. The way the inner most part of her receded into the cave of stalactites. That would drip clay water onto her molting skin. Pin needles from the sky, threatening. Ones that would stitch her back together. Inwards. Through.

There was a mist gurgling from the inside. Burning off old calcified clumps of green in this inner soup. She was wandering through. She was cutting back. There were rocks in the bottom of the river, before glass existed. Smooth. Loving. Drinking dying inner lies from feet with each step of these curling toes.

Her blood was preparing, rehydrating, finding its way through these new veins. Ones carved from hope, learning the path they’d cut from the sea beetles pressing tunnels into ocean floor. There were many indivisible things happening that we’d never know about. Little girls crying, birds flying, sheep dying, forgotten bags and sandals, words, faces, glasses, memories, identities. Births, embers in the middle of the night. Moths nestled in the door frame and behind the faucet. Sentences they wanted to say, pets they wanted to name, people finding fame through computer screens, time in the eyes, numbers that climb.

There was water dripping down the door. The screens held back what could have been more. What could have been no barrier between me and everything. But the rims of these glasses of life were curling into craters that felt impossible to climb out of. I was drifting further back. Down and out. Where would I go this September rain? To the thick within.