To think of all the bloodstreams that have run into the sea of this single self,
the generations of genes flowing down through the centuries
combining ever more tightly to form this discrete skeleton,
these limbs, this thinking brain and beating heart,
this centered gravity:
It’s breathtaking, and not quite believable.
And sometimes, it saddens me to think that this story will end here,
that the blood I’ve spilled and secreted, leaked and lost,
will be all that I’ll have bequeathed;
that, worthy as they are, words and pages cannot be bound in every way,
cannot pass between bodies, to emerge anew and flow on;
that, on my last day, this river shall run dry.
Erika Dreifus lives in New York, where she writes poetry and prose.