elephants

the elephants walk in slow lines
towards maybe graveyards,
maybe schoolyards.
she walks, in slow circles,
through maybe crossroads, maybe through stones
that sing of deities, as promised.
but we walk far enough, there are no roads, here,
only empty fields and singing spheres
that fancy themselves planets,
orbiting around some nothing
they presume to call their sun.

but we, we have no suns--
we laugh with our eyelashes
and dance with bullets in our heads;
eyes gouged out, we see with our bones instead.
and we tell stories in fire circles
of the living, dreaming dead; it seems they are, these days,
the only beings we understand.
so we squeeze our lemon juice
and we write secret messages on our hands
so that when we die
they will know
we are like them.
and we pray, with broken fingers, to our ancestors' gods-
they are gods we don't believe in, but we have nothing else.
so we build them stone temples,
but we sabotage the stones
so that they crumble into ruins of superstitious hopes-
slowly, making our own proof
that we are all there us.

it is sad, maybe. it is absurd.
but it is the only way we are

enough

for each other.

we walk, with the elephants,
toward maybe graveyards,
maybe schoolyards.
either way, we hear children laughing in the east winds,
playing hopscotch,
and, unknowing, we laugh with them,
walking slow into the dark.