I once slept with a man

who found vortexes in my home

who taught me to break up clouds with my mind

by starting small

who told me, before we slept together,

to picture a box, beside a horse, in the desert, with a ladder

 

& I said that

if we fucked

he would only remember

my body

 

& he said no—

he would remember

 

what I’d said about the box. We sat in the street

playing cat sounds from an app until kittens

started to appear. I was young—

very young

 

He called it cloudbusting and in return

I pressed my hands to the mossy rocks

beneath a waterfall & told him about

the study in which hospital patients

fared better when they could see a body

 

of water from their rooms. There are

different types of bodies: human, animal, water,

& knowledge. He was a traveler. He stopped

texting after the night with the box & so

 

the next time he told me he was passing through

I ignored the message. I was young, remember.

& the sex had been very bad. I don't think of

him much these days, but I often lay on my back

 

& break up clouds

with my mind

& laugh

because

they were already breaking