How long, how low,
till the river in my chest learns to rise again?
I’ve been kneeling in the dusk,
counting heartbeats like rosary sins.
Your name’s a ghost note
humming through the cracked amp of my ribs,
feedback of a prayer I can’t quite sing.
Every mile of night I swallow
tastes like the salt of doors I closed too slow.
Tell me the dark has a bottom,
that tomorrow’s throat won’t hold me
like yesterday’s echo—
I’m still falling,
still calling,
still.