7.

Well, for the most part it's half-truths,
quarter-truths, failing proofs you know
won't make it through two rounds of
testing.
The less of it looks surface-like:
stillness ripples rip still.
It's where my father smiles at me
not so true as real.

They're trying to let me get away
with whatever I want and slip-poof!
a degree on my knee nobody
will look at.
I'll get lots of practice, suppose,
in still ripples still ripping.

Thousands of layers of thought,
he said. So I saw birds raw
lungs and sand and a girl sewing
closed my vagina.
stop that.
drowning.
rippling still.
still.

6.

And I am so glad we brought our friends
to the spot where rippling glass sounds like
laughs as it slides over a rock shaped
like shoulder blades.

And I am so sad that all of the Time
you are feeling something that's brother
is drowning, whose mother is screaming,
whose father is rage.

And I am so unsure of what will come in
all of the tomorrows I will tie to you.
Perhaps we'll come back to the sneezing creek
stealing our insight.

Or perhaps we'll leave on a haze of
imagination and planes and turn scary days
into adventure games where we'll let
uncertainty fill our sails.