I
A guardian at the gates of this volcanic vent,
I suck steam, swallow ash, and
I have ferried friends, teachers,
family in pieces across this trench
on a thrum of sulfur plumes

My father went whole and alone before
I carried the parts of my mother
that, in mortal measure, might mark her
then brought back questions
about my own bitter gifts of mothering

I dreamed a child and woke myself
from this skin diving year
in which I angled my heart
like a lantern lure to the surface,
to bear us over this fresh hadal river
we have been crossing again and again

II
I survive yet at this edge
lodged between loss and rescue
holding vigil over an ashen roar
pouring from a thin thin gap
I listen inside a closed ear
The absence of lost voices
drowns all sound, and only
long bodies of eels brush past

What greeting can be given
in the face of such unlit faces
Few come back and tell
Their testimonies paper paste
words slide into sodden mess
None of this is pulp enough
to plug a river of hot mineral, once opened

Who would dare to close that fertile portal
where phase boundaries vanish
and superfluid we slip between
hath’al-bab, Baba, this grave door we pass through
to bahr al-hadiyu, the heavy peace

III
I walked here from the bottom
of the Dead Sea to this western
end, black stone beneath
my feet, saltwater for veins,
grains of desert grind my teeth

What’s sunk under the waves knows
what’s on the surface sailing
it takes a coral life, makes a choral reef
for a chorus constellation entering another story

Everything drowned in the sea is eaten
sinks to the floor crushed
or grows another life in the abyss
Continents slip, one under another

The earth would do for drowning us, too
What is buried knows what green grass
your bare feet tousled, what’s below
may feed or poison, and all alive
must draw on such sources.

‍