Down at the river’s lip
we strip and wheel
off the dock like moon-mad children, strewn
into brackish nights
with wounds we don’t want
to heal. Struggling and spitting,
we swim; we spoon
currents, rippling out
toward each other, grouped
in pairs like mating critters, yawping, flinging
baptismal mud, we loop
ourselves like Ouroboros,
teething on tongues.
Goose-bumped and cold, each takes their turn.
“Who here believes in sin?”
—our childish prayer
bewildering no one
but us, and off-kilter
we stray, careening back up the bank still set
to fail again and again, forgetting to find regret.
