Say you gave up God there in the middle of rising waters.
The current swilling at your calves.
Black sand moving on the shore of you.
A triangulation of dread: body, water, God.
Say you woke each subsequent day to paper fish on your back.
Your sluice box dammed with pyrite.
Each tributary refusing to give up the gold.
This is how to become a ghost in a ghost town.
Emptiness hanging from your bucket, the rope of propulsion gone.
The crank a miscarried sonnet unable to turn.
Say the conditional is not a game you play for fun.
You are nailed tight to its cross.
A slew of wreaths in lieu of a pew.
Another motification to breathe through.
Eimear Laffan's work has appeared in Atlas & Alice, MoonPark Review & Wildness Journal. She lives in Nelson, British Columbia.
Twitter: @cadmiumskies