the history of water

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This is the history of water; how it
drips across skin — faucets, floods, never forgetting
thousands of touches in a meniscus.
There is death and there is birth; how we
swam naked with our bodies sixty percent lake water, the small
islands of our skin surfacing, barely touching.
We’re standing bone-naked in the skeleton of our
shower, history pooling around my ankles:
our skin like oil in all this — all of this,
holding ourselves together by the wetness;
the dewdrops of foliage on our minds — our
mouths collecting sin and hope, faith and
rare miracles, four hundred wars cleaning the
dark hoops of my eyes.
Washing ourselves clean with
the dark bones of secrets, of loss, of famine and
fall and friends who became lovers by accident.
Water, repeating itself — as lather
rinse and repeat, magnolia perfumed bubbles collecting
like salt dunes, our feet pressing into the sand,
the tides cleaning but never
forgetting.

—Shinji Moon

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