Stagnation

There are too many places out there,
cities like beehives
and rolling hills and towns and deserts
and empty roads
and ocean waves choked with algae
each of them, just floating past fingertips
like bubbles waiting to be popped.

I am tumbling here
in this rushing river of a city
cast against the stones
like a minnow,
despair lines this riverbed.

These needs are little earthworms
chewing through my dirt,
my saltlick.

I sleep at night
because I tell myself that
I am topography, too.
My sleek underarm, a shell
my soft belly,
the warm sand before the ocean
the dip of my backbone, a wheat field.

I am places I haven’t seen yet,
And behind my lids, a sunset.