Wrong Full

You hold everything you need
In the bowl of your hands
They say.

(These empty things?)
You rub the places
so long dry
they’d forgotten thirst
until one day
in a month
in a year
when even your name
had ceased
to wet any tongue,
your fingers slip together
in the wrong lacing.
Skin shudders, nerves recoil
but in that lurch
of disquiet
the leaking stops
just like that.

What they mean
is yes, you are the vessel
as much as its cracks.
Also
the caulk
and the spring
and the accident
waiting to happen.

Image: Howardena Pindell, Songlines: Cosmos (Detail), 2017