Editor’s Note: Introspective Ramblings is Amherst Wire’s poetry column, dedicated to showcasing student’s creative work.

In the End I Was More Than Myself

There could be water everywhere, 

one day. I am trying to prepare.

I read that when it comes 

we will know by the color of the sky, 

trained light giving way to bleeding. 

As a person limited purely to myself,

I can make a racket out of almost anything. 

Poppies. The flora of any unoriginal static.

I crouch in seams to meet vibrant noise. 

A recognition which, in water, would quiver

materially and be known, even to those 

sleeping in the brush. As if 

I could contain myself. I become 

what I cannot have just by looking. 

Think of all the bodies shimmering 

in the pool. We can’t help 

but knock into each other, 

hair caught in everyone’s mouths.

And I was always a cloudy heap. 

A flood comes and I am ready. 

The water begins and ends 

where I touch it.

Email Riley at [email protected]