The direction was to keep watering stones.
And before the take-off, I wanted to show you
how the pond had filled itself up overnight, that
moss was about to hug its coarse surface.
By noon, the spectacle was gone, only traces
of moonlight and dew. What bothers me

now is an aversion to fire. A professor asked me
if this was my greatest fear. Answer was no, stones
falling from skies is. Too much trace
of blood that day. Not that it happened yet. You've
to first find out how compelling sincerity is. Surface
rhymes with Cedar when said backwards. That

much is a lie, the same manner Mother confessed that
she was a sinner. No such belief requires you and me
to surrender all things that hurt. This resurfaced
a few decades ago. Your teeth-grinding was like stone
against stone. No one liked that. A shrink advised you
to seek help from one neighbor whose hobby is tracing

items from old receipts. As a child I loved to trace,
kept mum about this. So much gossip these days that
there seems to be no reason to write at all, you
say in frustration. Infrastructure makes no sense to me
as well as textile, paint, roofs, and cranes on stones
that lead to no exit. In the end, the answer is surface:

longing upon realizing we're doomed to sink. Surface,
to understand depth, then distance. To trace
emotions on palms. Because the weight of six stones
in each pocket was once understood by Woolf. That
explains the heart in poetry today. This is me
reciting: to-mah-toes. And wondering where you

are. The crash happened just as you
were cleaning ashes from yesterday. On the surface,
it looked like koi about to give birth. Trust me,
seawater is just as salty as tap. Why I keep tracing
locations in the first place might just prove that
theory on continental drifts. There was tone

then cadence then the word.  And beneath you,
bloomed stones reaching for the surface. Let me
re-trace. Nothing is more beautiful than that.