I lay asleep under you,
still and dark as uninhabited
countryside, my blood slowly
drying between us, the break in my flesh
beginning to heal, open, a border
permanently dissolved.
The inhabitants of my body began to
get up in the dark, pack, and move.
All night, hordes of people
in heavy clothes moved south in me
carrying houses on their backs, sacks of
seed, children by the hand, under
a sky like smoke. Grazing grounds
shifted by hundreds of miles. Certain animals,
suddenly, were nearly extinct,
one or two odd knobby
shapes in opposite parts of the land.
Other forms multiplied,
masses of deep red wings
pouring out of nowhere. Rivers changed course,
the language turned
neatly about
and started to go the other way.
By dawn the migrations were completed. The last
edge of the blood bond dried,
and like a newborn animal about to be imprinted,
I opened my eyes and saw your face.