Everywhere the spirits are hungry.  
In a dream the sea screams at me,  
the world is full of tiny traps.   
Hunted by lions in terrible skins,   
I’m suddenly aware
of what it means to be a body,  
a mouth made for eating darkness.  

I dreamt you and I were walking underwater   
stretched backwards through time
inflamed by moonlight,   
luminous silhouettes wet
with the crushed velvet of desire, 
emptying ourselves into a spiral galaxy.  

We swam through the night
like thirsty flowers, furious fuming stars   
to a point of pure blur, pure erasure.    
Even as the long wave of pleasure falls apart,  
I emerge from the pale nets of sleep   
like a knot of silk loosed, leaving a rip—
grief I couldn’t have imagined the magnitude of.      

~  Cento using lines/ phrases contained throughout Katherine Larson’s poetry collection Radial Symmetry