Trading Countries

It began with fog 
and headless homes.
We lose sight of star-markers;
streetlights burn out.
This is a world of crawlspaces,
children digging through mulch
or gravel. The steppe-streaming sun

uncoils, scalelight rasping stone.
We root into baked sand for bones,
pitch the worst of ourselves
into river.
         I think that if I touch her 
she'd unfold into cherry blossoms, skin 
slipping off, hoofbeats
in lieu of a pulse. I feel my own

composition: apples 
in my throat,
dry-brush ligaments.

Horizon peeks from valley's end, 
blue-eyed. I have seen these hills
on the other half of earth,

centuries soaked in the land's spine.