WRITE THE WORLD REVIEW ARCHIVE

The air wept to welcome us
or name us a siege.

From the sky I saw endless gray rivers,
older than the cliché of arteries

and even miles beneath us, I could still pick out
the sand bars barely submerged, the roil of sediment.

Over ocean, the clouds became our islands.
Imagine a fairy tale archipelago, all cotton soft—

sometimes fables and lies are no less true.
The blue heartbreak of water might be the sky, which blackens, too.

But my favorite part of flight is the descent, the landing
when the miracle is undone

and everything returns to pumpkinseeds and mice,
quilts of land and stitched roads. A wash of red rooftops.

Only the air is made new. Wracked by salt
and sun burnt,

thick as tide, it sweeps past palms and calls to us:
You, you are the stranger here.

You are the miracle in this ocean.
You are the lie.