–Over 31 percent of Florida is wetlands. Ninety percent of those wetlands are 
freshwater (over 18,500 square miles), with only 10 percent being saltwater 
marshes and mangroves (approximately 2,000 square miles). 
-NOAA 
 

I’ll come back as a prairie in Colorado instead of plastering Florida with thick mud. 
Sopping arms and sadness will transform into buffalo grass and sparrows. 
 

Why do I insist on being heard? 
 

I am muddied curtains smeared on the windows of trucks. 
My thick water rises and falls. I am open. I give myself away. 
 

They call me ugly and fat. I am major flood control. 
I hang on my last hope like moss on cypress limbs. 
 

I take myself back. In my body are nests. Grief falls from these trees. 
I crouch behind palmetto fronds duckweed pipewort lizard tail 
 

I purify water. My lap of heavy water holds bicycles keys 
loneliness hampers. My body is fern 
 

is shadowed glass is a shelf lined with turtle heads. My body imagines 
rags and ribbons laced over a door. My body becomes rain 
 

becomes sludge. Why can’t I create clear boundaries? 
Yes, I’ve always been a witch, lying low. I’ll come back 
 

as the sky: cracked mud turned to white flowers.