Growing Strong
Before ocean, there was wasteland peeling away from itself rotting like collar sweating from bones wide-eyed cryptids / sighborgs / my mother were the only bodies of water back then called the bending arcs of our waking forms: horizon (her eyes on) called our waking forms
You’re a body of water I want to sit beside
a humble gesture nine hands exoskeleton a certain salting godless Before ocean, to gut feelings was to take a knife to detritus bowed gatherers picking at anything left too long out in the sun a glitch a scab a shimmer & distant lovers could only sing the stretch between
by Amelia Mertha
So we asked the birds for guidance (Remember they showed us flight path & play?) (Remember we called the flurry of wings swim?)
Art by Emma Cao They said, liberation is to make a sky in your image Becoming ocean, we discarded the border skin and belly-up lazed all over this wasteland in the tiny mouths of crevices and caves opaque and naked
all these bodies of water, a new sky below— chanting
show me show me
and swim
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