what if i told you that i’d known
explicitly of the barricade climbing
higher before it fell? because

i found the horses encircling
the city walls one morning.
while you tended to the coast.
they fed from my fingers the
entire time you drowned your
bodies, asking all the while
for war. i hid the saltwater tears
behind my sleeves when i
combed their manes;

they were feeding the grass
when i killed them.

i didn’t know what to say
about the children’s hunger
five eternities before the riot. 
if you think that we should
have kept their parents out 
all this time then i agree. but
deception is difficult when 
you’re still bleeding. 

what i know is: the blame is
mine for the flood. but i, too,
felt the screams of a hurting
animal long before they ate
them. long before the people,
grown-up now, 
held me down just long enough
for the waves to eat me.
now we’re all under the sand. 

didn’t know about you, but 
i turned into mud the next time
the dawn broke. perhaps people
were just better off fragile.