We Make Mud

Girl Breathes a River

There is a river flowing inside Girl’s body that floats up out of Girl whenever Girl breathes. Brothers other than us might say, that’s no river, that’s just some girl breathing out her girl breath, but us brothers who made Girl and us brothers who believe Girl, we know a river when a river’s what we see. No, yes, us brothers, we know better than to say no to what we see and what we say and what we believe to be true. So what us brothers say instead of us saying no is we say Girl. We hop up on board of our made-out-of-mud boat and we oar our way down along this muddy river that flows, just like a river flows, up and out of Girl’s mouth. Us brothers, we float our made-out-of-mud boat down this made-out-of-mud river. We row-row-row our boat singing songs that float up from the bottom of our boots. Girl breathes a river is what us brothers sing as we dip our mud oars into this muddy water, this muddy river where, sometimes, in some places, it is so muddy that our paddles become shovels digging down into dirt. And this boat that is us brothers’? It is no longer a boat for us brothers to row in. What this boat becomes is, it becomes a tractor. And back behind us, in our mud-tailed rooster’s tail of a wake, we spit out from our singing fish mouths songs that turn into seeds, then seedlings, that turn into full-grown trees: trees that rise up and leaf up from the bottom of this river’s bottom: so many islands of so much green growing in the middle of so much water: so much water that looks so much like mud that it must be mud. And this, brother, are you picturing this? This muddy river that we are now floating down, that we are going down: it is a garden. It is ours for us brothers to keep.