I want you to remember the water tonight
unblinking, marginally memorable hands rising from
the surface sprinkled with luminous dust
millions of loosestrife tiki torches and petroleum
guillotines assembled
with bricks of aluminum ash on the other bank.
All of this should stay in your memories and become
a motif of childhood, antonymous with innocence;
and also that we’re the constituents of this voracious spiral
without a vote
tornado of evanescence burning through ancient
driftwoods
waters rising centimetre by centimetre with fresh oblivion
of the orcas and orang-utans
where scalding fingers are coated with cobalt cries of
Congolese babies
gasping on the same water that carried the dream your
mother induced
to your open ears and closed eyes, sweet unchartered
weight in my palm.

Tomorrow I’ll take you down to the mouth of the river
and watch your mountains drown in the ocean.
You’ll be the size of a young fir, limbs dipping into the
chilling waves
and laughter blooming from your newly-aligned chattering
teeth.
The water will come, before you, before me, before our
mother even.
It’ll be so full of stories that it’ll swell like the belly of an
alcoholic and erupt in
this one final lullaby; right now
I won’t tell you any more.