Eternity on Endless Loop
by Tucker Lieberman
When one current pushes you down
and another pushes you up,
I am swimming under you to save you,
and I am the current pushing you up.
The amount of the exhaustion is yes.
The will to persevere is yes.
Give me certainty that this is the moment.
Give me patience to sweat it out.
Build me in sand and then uncastle me.
Let my silence speak consent.
Make me the lamp lifted by your door.
Let me in, turn me off, turn me out.
Give me a shell in which to enclose your voice
when you feel you are ready to trade it.
Give me the memory of whose voice it is.
Give me the willingness to return it unasked.
Let your light into the world.
Let the current bring you up.
Don’t look back to see if it is I.
Don’t listen to the tape.
Give me the adulthood to stay awake while you sleep.
Give me the liberation not to be mad.
I am eternity on endless loop.
I snip the tape, hearing only waves.
and another pushes you up,
I am swimming under you to save you,
and I am the current pushing you up.
The amount of the exhaustion is yes.
The will to persevere is yes.
Give me certainty that this is the moment.
Give me patience to sweat it out.
Build me in sand and then uncastle me.
Let my silence speak consent.
Make me the lamp lifted by your door.
Let me in, turn me off, turn me out.
Give me a shell in which to enclose your voice
when you feel you are ready to trade it.
Give me the memory of whose voice it is.
Give me the willingness to return it unasked.
Let your light into the world.
Let the current bring you up.
Don’t look back to see if it is I.
Don’t listen to the tape.
Give me the adulthood to stay awake while you sleep.
Give me the liberation not to be mad.
I am eternity on endless loop.
I snip the tape, hearing only waves.
Tucker Lieberman identifies as a street mermaid from outer space. In the fiction anthology, “I Didn’t Break the Lamp,” you can read his story in which a game show contestant is bothered by a ghost. He lives in Bogotá, Colombia.