The name you were given and the one you are known by

Light reaches one side of the river before the other.

A coyote tells secrets to the hemisphere
of my mind that cannot speak. It is busy shuffling
scene after scene of each girl I’ve been. Human

logic, river logic. Every successful line I took
through rapids felt accidental. Tell me, You can’t
steer the boat by studying what you’ve already
passed through. But I am still a creature, clotted
with occipital afterimages—

_____you on the bathroom floor cutting
_____into your thigh, wet rip of soaked silk,

_____blood lifted,

_____how he chose which bone to break
_____before he even struck you, how you created

_____a room inside yourself when voices
_____began to clash, found a room within
_____that and one beyond that even.

_____It was a wonder

_____until, twenty years later, you are easy
_____to love but hard to find.

In a river, the hole where water pours
over a rock and folds back on itself
can be deadly, can trap anything
that enters it.

It is called a keeper.