In Georgia the land is stubborn.
It refuses to surrender to the water, spatters out
roots and roads and patches of reedy grass
for bodylengths into the shallows before it finally gives way.
Either this, or the water is stubborn:
crawling out hollows in this breathing fossil, Georgia,
who makes itself from the millimeters left.
Billboards for pralines made fresh last the decades.

I’m busy lasting decades,
making dreams of making swamps
when I wake up with a finger inside me.
Here we are. Both stubborn.
I know I know the outside edges of me
and he knows this isn’t true
             knows if I wasn’t thirsty I shouldn’t have laid out my roots to drink
             knows I shouldn’t have fallen asleep next to him if I wasn’t curious,
really, what might be left after the erosion.
Here I am. Somewhere that isn’t Georgia.
Something that is either holding its breath
or has forgotten how to make rock out of it.
            Instead makes sound.
            Instead makes fresh.
            Instead makes a place where pecan meets sugar,
where neither remembers how to stop being made of earth.