We are mostly water before we are dust.
The body’s clues are self-evident.
Parched soles crack and veins rise
from furrowed hands.
These blue channels, like rivulets,
sluice, surging as long as they can.
Riddled shell: bones evaporate to this.
My mother’s nonagenarian leg
seeps an ocean through a single pore.
Countless fresh towels
or a thousand fingers pressing
will avail nothing
but the scorch
of astonished helplessness.
Copious flow: her waters want to join
the sea. To surrender her wetlands—
thirst, quench, brackish tears, years
brimmed with sweet moisture.
To become the desert, at last.