i.
Remember back to when your eyes
first opened like doors to the world.
Hours earlier you swam in the womb
and knew only that red sea.
Your blood moved, you even breathed,
but in half-sleep you never guessed
That life was piped in from outside.
Maybe you heard a rumor about light,
the sun, others like yourself.
How could you even dare dream it – death –
inhaling dry air, to drown in that myth,
breath.
ii.
We are the proof of the place,
our bodies thrust like knives
through the skin between the worlds
until death withdraws the blade again.
The rend closes like water,
the skin reseals and leaves no scar.
In between, we gape like wounds,
like windows. Soul flows
like wind into a house
where someone sits and wonders,
is there an outdoors? A sky?