After days of thirst, the island appears as hands bringing the sea up
to a mouth, its leaves like drops of water across a palm.
I step from my boat onto its boney shore, walk through the forest
for hours, looking for a creek, deer tracks, any sign
of life, until I reach a well, cradled by roots and stones. Inside
is a brightness of milk, like a muted word. I drink
three handfuls, open my eyes in a field completely white.
There is a well in the center, and inside it a darkness
with no reflection. I think: lost sound with no one to hear it,
sound of the dead, your voice, which is like the moment
a star closes its wave of light, which is like my body
curled on the ground. Where I wake. My head opens
its eyes, terrified the rest of its body rots in the well. Three days
bloom a purple garden in my mouth. No animal comes to eat
the constellation of flowers, this waking the distant expansion
of a universe that cannot feel us.