Sometimes my feet get trapped
this ten year sediment —
this imprint of you.
What would it mean to become myself?
What—and who—would I have to lose?

Sometimes when my bare hands touch that lake,
I run the cold water over my face as if
it might cleanse me
of everything.

Sometimes I forget
all of it. In one of those stupors, some August,
the sun shines down on the water.
It’s up to my chest;
the summer sunlight is dancing
on the little waves. I feel a spirit
in its blinding,
telling me to stop time,

telling me
I’m already absolved.

Sometimes we meet here
in a place only we can remember.
We never arrive at the same time,
But always I can feel you’ve been here again—

Sometimes, some Autumn, the leaves
ascend off the trees; whispers of grief,
tornadoes of crimson, golden rage.
I let them surround me:
surrender to their gales. There
I ask his ghost: Do you still
walk these shores where I last saw you?

Sometimes, snow drifts over Tuscarora.
I stand on her banks in quiet awe
and wonder how it would feel to be
enraptured by the tide — how it would feel to
plunge beneath the ice — how it would feel to
wash away this fire
that seems to want to erase me
from inside.

Chapter IV: Tuscarora

Every winter my mind gets stuck back here, goes to this place in my memory, suspended, life on hold. No matter how far I’ve gone from it, I always drive back to the lake, or find myself closing my eyes to remember the first snowfall over the corn fields.

Sometimes it’s the smell of gasoline, cinders, burning feathers that comes over me when I see fire, or the sight of blood that reminds me you had crimson on your boots and somehow it felt like family.

Sometimes in hunting season, a gunshot in the distance would bring me to the day you all let the turkey loose—you went running with your shotgun, carried its body back over your shoulders, behind you a trail of red all through the woods.

With each sudden flashback, I realize even more so just how much I never knew, never would have guessed, that the Poconos would become like a cornerstone. The hills I’d always wander, full of ghosts, a reflection of a self I can lose so easily, a self I sometimes forget is inside of me.

Sometimes between the fog and the snow I ask myself: do you come back here, to where we were, seven years ago now? I know we all live here still, in a way. Do you drive back like me, and, do you remember everything? Because I can feel that you were just there before. That you still come back like me, to remember—and to forget—what we lost.

I remember a dream where the moon fell away from Tuscarora: You and I step in the pitch black, kicking the snow with our boots, smirking to ourselves, barely able to see our hands. We walk from a meadow, past rows of tall grass and the Private Property signs lining the trees and onto the docks. Wordless, you and I behold black water. For a moment, from the sky of a new moon, no light shines upon the world. The lake makes no sound. He is gone, and so go the tides. Emboldened, you and I walk deep into the still water, convinced that the cycle has been broken.

How did we not know then, after years of fear and control, that these sacred waters would be the last place we’d all walk together?

For the rest of my life, I will remember this blood that felt like my blood.

Will you remember it too?