I am touching the stone walls with these pruney fingers

Of mine- I've been too long underwater

Swimming in damp air, hot air,

Air so heavy I can barely stand to breathe it in.

I am feeling the ridges of the wall, the cracks in the stone

That maybe I could climb up if it weren't so damn wet here

If the force of the sky above me were smaller

Or if someone kinder tossed me a rope

You, like all large, immortal bodies,

Are unrepentant.

Unknowing.

Immovable.

Should I forgive you this gravity?

Would it matter enough

To move one water droplet

Here, beneath my hand?

Would it matter enough to add

A wrinkle to my fingers or

Remove a cramp from my
Perpetually upward-straining neck?

I might as well forgive the stones

For their role in trapping me

Or forgive the water its wetness

We all warp the space around us,

The air we move through,

Tearing little tiny holes in the universe.

How empowering!- but

We displace something

With each step we take.

For each hole we tear,

Something falls through a crack.

For each gravity well created
There's something, someone

At the bottom who'll never get out.

I forgive the water,
I forgive the well,

I forgive my pruney fingers

And I forgive my sore neck.

I forgive all of us who tear at

The fabric of everything

Without a single care for

The creatures we may

Strand there

I forgive the metaphorical rock,

It never did anything for or against me.

But I am touching the stone walls,

Watching the water drip down, down

Onto my lap, and pool there, run over

My thin legs, turn to mud under me-

And I am tracing the cracks in the rock

(Though I know them all by heart)

And I am looking for a rope-

So maybe I don't forgive you.