The others
We are not dead,
and those others are not our ghosts.
We don’t know where they came from,
where they are going.
Their shadows are not our shapes, changeable like the moon.
Their wars are not our fairies floating on the waters.
Their hollows are not our cracks on the walls.
In our sleep, they melt,
into one gesture.
What do they want to say?
And why every night,
in the sight of the stars, do they call on us,
and we are in the middle of the river.
They carry their perforated jars.
We count the holes,
and they count our memories.
To catch their fears
we set fires.
To imitate us,
they lit our darkness.
We will abandon them, we say,
and they will slip away like a passing idea
or light not knowing where to fall.
We pretend it’s not dry yet, the life
we left
on the string,
and go seeking their voices.
Like them, we hide
behind our dreams,
and don’t disappear. .
Between a dream and another,
we hear their wooden steps.
We call on them
and they are in the middle of the river.
pea river journal 
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