Children sit under the same sky

We drink the waters of ages

quenched we seek other sustenance

Upon arrival

our words form the thoughts

of our closest peoples

Sharing looks and glares

grins and shrugs

Invited to endure the peace and bloodshed

Arms grasping for warmth and sanctuary

Hands waving away the malice

and malevolence

Feet trotting firm

on paths not yet negotiated

Seeking the unknown is poised

ascertaining the search for the familiar

Flower or the tree within the forest

roots settled into a ground, a soil beneath

We are eminent amidst the star sky evening

this bed we sleep on

our path not yet found

The land rolls across

underneath

the bodies of divergent versions of ourselves

The unnoticed at once a focal point

acknowledged

Traveler’s faces gaunt in shadow

unaware of the nature of fate and accepting

of the possibility of what may come

Eyes gazing downward bashful

not ready to consume fully the desire

of volition

Upward their eyes reach

we see forward

earnest

continuing

Take my eyes,

emptied sockets need no fill.

Cup my hands as your own, the ridges of your fingertips form a constellation with mine.

Sweat in pools upon the memory of our dance.

Of the Earth we eat as one,

it’s catastrophic tidings of messy ambiguity.

While children in wombs wait for life, we drink the night and pass over into supple darkness.

Take all of me with subtle restraint.

Pause my breath to keep my sigh.

Fixed is this moment, below is above.

When you saw me, I was gone.

Hide away yourself from unwanted belonging.

Rupture the ideas that trespass against

forward momentum of the present.

I follow secrets along the seams of distrust.

Manufactured by myself and sought after with residual clarity.

They are untrue

I am a fictitious predecessor paying homage to an articulately constructed self.

Do you drown in the image

or suffocate under the steadfast weight of impurity?

Travelled not to the serene bank of verisimilitude,

Stopping to digest the clandestine morsels of former fabrications.

A head slightly above water, sinks still in the murkiness of authenticity.

Circular, the moments spread over days.

In lives not ever having been lived,

the veneer is false and omniscient.

I know not your name,

but I know who you are.

You have been known to me eternally.

You are the Atlas on which I travel.

Seeking your miles,

You climb to my summit.

Unravel your sails

I drift to your light.

My end is your beginning

Continuous, our road exhales each year.

Exhume me from your ground,

I am Dawn, where the ashes gather.

Eternally I know you

But know not your name.