They could have been anyone,
no one special. I didn’t need
them to be angels or stars.
But to me, they were a boy
and twin girls. Like ink soaking
through from the other side
of the page I write on now,
they form no images, no story.
A crack in the wall admitted
no spider, no draft, but only
because there was no wall.
Often, as a child, when I did
something wrong and got away
with it, I thought a ghost
or spirit or a kind of assistant
god (not the Real God, who was
too busy for the souls of children
and it turns out that is true)
would bleed through to me
from the skin of the other world,
cut by my misdeed or sin,
and catch me. I wanted to be seen,
known for what I truly was:
a bad child, unlike the perfect
water children I would never have
the chance to know.