Found

 

When they find me

Alone.

The questions and headshakes

The quizzical depths

Of loam and silt they cannot sort through

No reasoning to be caught

in bucket or screen.

 

When they find me

Dressed as animals do

In the skin I was in

The day I roared into the plain

I will shock in cold white,

filled with trout breath

And minnow kisses

 

When they find me

Broken shell

Battered lovely in purple and blue

Head struck rock, knee scraped branches

Lips like Dahlia and mountain blue Belle

They will lament

The wasted beauty

 

When they find me

The questions of why,

Lost to the brine of self-takers before me

Of all the ways I failed

And too long loitered in futility,

 

When they find the body,

They will burn it

While the soul sneaks

down river bends to the sea

not to be found.