Three Waters – read by Sara McHaffie
Water runs down my face and
covers me
I sink into the water
I am safe
I am unsafe
I go into the water I do not
Gasp for breath
One must submerge
The pressure of the water
Covers something in me
I have not lived through monsoon rain
I do not know the mind of
the monsoon
In the poet’s stories the riverbank is a danger
A child drowns
The mother swims
The guardian looks
No answer comes
I have not been close to
drowning
I shield myself with water
Is every attempt to breathe otherwise than is
expected rebellion
In the water the pressure breathes for me.
I have felt what it is
to be unable to breathe
Stone needs a viewer in order to be seen.
Water does not.
Water becomes a mask stone a mirror
where desire flickers an eternal face strange,
Recognisable
In water the mask is the water’s surface itself
through which a face only then appears.
Water takes identity, something changes.
I show you through which crack I look
Can the one who shields herself
join that which hates wounds
all the more alive and bare.
I am open to all who cross my path.
I long for what matters most, but I remember its shout.
What is not covered.
I have not turned to stone but does anyone look
Water and I keep our own tensions
still I can sink into it or let it run off.
What does water feel on the shoreland of fear and ease
Does water turn into a silent demand that no one may bleed into view
What does the
stone say then?
Rust, moss, cracking stone, melting snow: no surface remains.
Even the mask
rusts.
The spiral winds memory, wound, nature and the impossibility of the human
into one.
I return to water.
The rigid runs off me as rain.
Poem by Antu Sorainen
Read by Sara McHaffie
Photographs by Sara McHaffie and Antu Sorainen
Watercolour by Antu Sorainen
Thank you for inspirations The Culture Monks Monsuun Group
Queer Pain 