The Pilgrimage

Something here is unnatural. The fish glowing
at our toes, the Sprite cans crushed onshore.
How good it feels being here, sharing water
in the exact clean warmth of the tub before
my brother died. I can’t remember the last time
I let a body rush into my ears this way. Tawanda’s
nose stings. He’s lived enough — three years
more — to say we shouldn’t stay out in this
long, though this — he sighs, cupping his eyes

to the lake, the waking of skin to touch — this
is worth it. My papa’s voice chimes, telling me
not to go out for even a second in this heat.
He recites this over and over, as if he forgets
the words as he frees them, laughing like mourning
doves. This heat, this heat, this heat. His mind,
I’m pretty sure, is going. So part of me goes along
with it. For my mother’s birthday, after all — today,
did I forget to mention? — my grandparents make the trek

to her grave as if it is holy. Six miles they trudge,
alive again, through rain, hopping trains, scaling
arthritic mountains, the tide of their storm-
white pupils, their hearts a small church a
flowering plot where they attempt, as in years
past, this same reincarnation. This slow killing
of themselves. They touch the stone of her
body and I am there. No matter how far I go,
I am this bird at the end of their eternity, my heels

wearing this mountain stone, peck by peck.
I used to count off my grievings. Or was it a kind
of keeping score? Punish myself for forgetting
to think of them. Sleep less one night for sleeping
more. At each waking, Bibi sent a bird. So beautiful,
but such a loud sound in the morning! She carries me
like a child, arm’s-length from the drowning.
I can’t accept this lake could possibly harm me. Its
natural die-off rising to surface like skin, voices

wading there. I think: Everything must be made
balanced. When something dies, something else foams
from the pent mouth of the earth. And sometimes
I have to be that mouth, making mud. If the kabk comes
back I really will excuse myself! I didn’t know who
it was. I didn’t know. I rappel into this water, floating
on my back, legs kicking a bit as I remember how
to do this. I turn again. I am shut up, silent as that boy
fallen from a porch swing, looking into a brilliance
of wind chimes. Counting the seconds until breath.