Sometimes I hug books I love so tightly
to my chest
in hopes that by some osmosis I will retain them.
Something like the way I retain water
when I eat too much salt.
But in writing this, I’ve realized,
maybe I’m doing it wrong
and need to eat the alphabet
to ever retain a word.
Sometimes when I walk I imagine the feeling
of my feet going through the floor
instead of on it,
like maybe how Jesus felt walking on water
or maybe how certain feet feel when trained
for coal walking,
and I could never compare a feeling to an action
or coal walkers to Jesus, but I just did, and I question my morph-ability
and make up words while choking on the alphabet and
sometimes the bottoms of my feet feel like coals without warning
and they walk with goals but I don’t know where I’m going.
Sometimes I just go
and see where go leads me
because there is always a point A and B,
and sometimes
there’s a C we wander to.
–Jenny Janzer, from Return to the Gathering Place of the Waters
