Bowls

Nested within you,
multiple bowls
holding the liquid
of you.

When one overflows
another will always catch the spill.
Little, if any, is ever allowed
to dampen the ground
where you’re standing.

How they are filled,
how they are shaken,
no one can say,

and you aren’t telling,
of course.  But inside,
you are swelled and warped
from the moist damage,
and the slippery fact is,
you won’t contain yourself
much longer, and you know it.

The bowls teeter, totter,
the contents slopping about
inside.  You’re seasick with the motion.
You’re going to founder, and fear —
the tiny bobber that won’t go under
as it is rocked in your head —
will soon be the only thing
you have left.