After the Dream Came the Habit

Cynthia Cruz

I woke last night

in a river.

How I got there

I don’t remember.

It was the sound

of AM radio

the static that occurs

in the space between worlds.

Like turbulence or vertigo.

And in that blackness

I went searching

for my mother.

This is the problem

with the body.

It’s like swallowing

a drug

or weather, or the mind

under duress.

You never know

what is going

to happen.

When God set me

here, upon this earth

already, it was

too late.

Cynthia Cruz is the author of seven collections of poems and two works of nonfiction. A novella, Steady Diet of Nothing, and a new collection of poems, Back to the Woods, are forthcoming in 2023. She lives in Berlin, Germany.
Originally published:
April 5, 2023

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