The mountains have unraveled into sand.

In small enough pieces, everything returns
to its first softness: a silk, a wind.

The mouse is soft in the snake’s mouth.
The snake is soft in its slither through the pond,
which used to rest in the mouth of the mountain.

My stomach is red knots in a red curtain.
Softly as a grain rolling in an anthill, one knot
is starting to untie itself. In the mirror I watch
my mouth redden at the margins like a poisoned pond.

A condor’s wings cast smoke over its waters.
The forest shivers spores from its leaves.
Sometimes a shadow clots my lungs, breaking
my breaths into smaller and smaller ones.

I do not feel my red stomach, my red mouth,
the smoke, the spores, the shadows.

The softness of it all is awful, like watching
an earthquake on mute. As if the sound of it
could catch on the air and steady the earth.

The soles of my feet are clouds that rain me
numbly into the long grass until the valley is a bowl
of sunset-colored water, deepening and deepening.