Salt Juice and Steam

There are times when my life has focus, when my lover finds the string tying me to earth, a thread of varying gauge and color, stretching to the near horizon. Yet I’m empty, heavy, on the edge of tears, where depth and joy and pain leak away (hold my breath don’t breathe I’ll lose it like the night long ago when I was drunk and cried helpless helpless). I’ve become gray and bent, a twisted structure retrieved from a pool of salt juice and steam, knowing I can’t have the whirlwind again, that tasty center, that unknowing nothing.