Our bodies

   were raised on sugar and water;
or milk and water, or rice
   and beans, which convert
eventually to sugar and water.
   The first shock
administered to our bodies
   was that of air. After that,
we forgot about the tunnels of blood,
   the months of rocking where we
were the boat and the darkness the only
   sea that could hold us without tiring.
Our bodies long for just enough
   ferment. For dust to mean nothing 
more harmless than what sticks to our palms
   as we shape flour and water into bread.
What is our citizenship but the landscape
   of bodies dredged out of the same ocean,
all of us stumbling in the general direction 
   of heat, or that lighthouse pulsing in the distance.