Maybe water is the way mountain streams glitter in sunlight. Maybe water is snowmelt rivers in early June in the Sierras, clumps of lupine flashing purple nearby. Maybe water is the Pacific. Maybe water is that icy salt spray from a curling wave. Maybe water is that glassy reflective earth. Maybe water is fog melt sand. Maybe water is fat drops on a canopy of redwoods. Maybe water is California. Maybe water is one winter in college. Rain for a month. Living in a cold wet cloud. Opium and weed and the way I couldn’t leave my bed. The way I lost weight that winter. Shed it like water. Maybe my bed was sanctuary. Maybe my window: a portal. Life ongoing outside without me. Maybe water is winter. Maybe water is the way we remember. Maybe my body doesn’t want to. Maybe that’s why I ran from desert to desert to desert. Prescott to Tucson to Cruces to Phoenix. Maybe my body rejected water. For years. Maybe sometimes bodies just want to dry out. Maybe I needed to. And maybe whiskey isn’t what it used to be. Maybe I’m not. Maybe we can’t all crawl into bottles all the damn time. And maybe I’ve always drank too much. California, Arizona, New Mexico. Maybe fuck me for drinking the way I did. One bottle a day. Maybe water is all the people I fucked or fucked over. Drunk. Maybe water is forgiving ourselves. Maybe water is we all have a past. Maybe water is just in that glass at my bedside in California. Maybe water is the cat sticking her whole head in to lap at the surface. Maybe water is that bedside table. Just one. And the too-big bed I used to share. Maybe water doesn’t have to be about some break up. Maybe water is that final rainbow we saw off the coast of Kauai. The too-blue sky, the clouds like paint dabs. Waves curling. Maybe water is the two of us that last day on some beach. Sprawled across sand, bodies soaked in salt. Maybe water is last days like that. Maybe water is about endings. Maybe we can’t let it be.

ALLISON FIELD BELL's debut poetry collection, All That Blue, is forthcoming in 2026. Find her at allisonfieldbell.com.