Days Before the River Seine

It’s waiting out there for me now,
In the light of Paris, rumbling little waves
in the rain perhaps
and I am here still, unpacked and ill prepared
heated with a slight fever.

Another river.
I have these rivers, the water kept.
I have the Mississippi in a jug on my shelf,
I have the Thames.
I’ve had the Seine before, but I was a just a girl.
Now I am grown.

It is the water that calls the water of me,
the tiny rivers in my arms,
the land of my skin.
I come back to the places where they come apart
where they meet bigger water and surrender themselves.
Places where they fall, separating drop for drop, each little cell.
To the places where they divide cruelly
my side from yours,

the way my skin divides my side from yours,
my legs are bank side
the river rolling from me, in those moments
where we come apart
and break down,
base,
animalistic,

coming to the water’s edge,
our heads bowed in reverence.
This is a prayer of sorts,
a pilgrimage,
and when it is over,
I will feel full
for a while at least.
Understand the ache will come back
but not right away.