Flood
Kim Addonizio
How images enter you, the shutter of the body
clicking when you’re not even looking:
smooth chill of satin sheets, piano keys, a pastry’s glazy crust
floating up, suddenly, so the hairs along your arm
lift in that current of memory, and your tongue tastes
the sweet salt of a lover as he surges
against you, plunges toward the place you can’t
dive into but which is deepening each moment
you are alive, the black pupil widening,
the man going down and in, the food and
champagne and music and light, there is no bottom to this,
silt and murk of losses that won’t ever settle,
and the huge unsleeping fish, voracious for pleasure,
and the soundless fathoms where nothing
yet exists, this minute, the next, the last
breath let out and not returning, oh hold
on to me as the waters rise, don’t be afraid,
we are going to join the others, we are going
to remember and tell them everything.