Sharks in the Rivers

by Ada Limon

I say something to God, but he’s not a living thing, so I say it to the river, I say, I want to walk through this doorway but without all those ghosts on the edge, I want them to stay here. I want them to go on without me. I want them to burn in the water.

She cannot decide what she desires, but today it is enough that she desires and desires. That she is a body in the world, wanting, the wind itself becoming her own wild whisper.

This is how we turn, so rotated and spun in our own isolations. The end is a circle, it comes again, and again. Do not erase me. (Yes, we say it.) Do not erase me.

I would leave it alone if I could leave it alone. —The High Strung

we were all so stoned that the world was perfectly defined by goodness and realness and the opposite of those.

I remember thinking this was what life was, and what I had always wanted: being pressed on a warm, flat rock, our wet imprint there as if it would matter, I am holding on. I am holding on.

Dear Today, I have said too much, yet give me this— I want to be a physical doll, just for now, a stupid, splendid thing, tumbled into the touchable day.

Today in this terrible cement city, I will do this bidding, but I tell you: I am there, across from Sonoma Creek, still hidden in the tree, where I cannot be unbelieved.

The very first time I really loved sex was the very first time I was happy to be a girl. I found out there were two hearts in a human body. I stared down at my smooth stomach, its separate pounding crawling out my belly button like a bulldozer. (What a pleasure—this dual dwelling of mysterious punctuated pulses!) Lying on a cream-colored bedspread overlooking the plaza, I felt I had swallowed a live bird whole.

What we define as human tenderness troubles each of us differently.

Turned out there was nothing beyond the blue sky. Which made the sky bluer and more holy than it had been before.

To lay one’s hand in another’s without fear is a seemingly simple act.

World, turn all you want to, faster even. I’ve come to like the way the breeze feels as it rips me limb from limb.