The sacrifice of things hurts at first
Light water beneath the dark
The sacrifice of things hurts at first
My steps depart from me
down avenues of banished
dead. I call out to them,
ask what world do you
think this is. Their eyes
open and close like breath
so often forgotten.
My story falls deeper
than trees, as I sit
at the edge of this loud
world waiting for the careful
unraveling of fingers,
how the end so often
resembles the beginning,
On the days when I live as someone else—
a god I do not know, or a one-eyed
merchant dropping coins from citrine fingers—
I fail to feel the light beneath this buried
city or the roots from its broken weather.
I shake and shift in gestures performed by another
to rid myself of ghosts from former lives
before they carry me to some other country
where you and I read the pages of the same book.
The same life. This life.
Sometimes, if I listen, I can hear it.
The water.
Peter Grandbois is the author of eight previous books, the most recent of which is This House That (Brighthorse Books, 2017). His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in over ninety journals. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is a senior editor at Boulevard magazine and teaches at Denison University in Ohio.
