Boiling barrels of poisonous acid water,

Blue phosphorescent in a pool

He went down the stairs to find out if the sink

Still turned on to get a drink of a clear clean sip

She went through the hallways of the desert, sand stuck in her chest and to her lips

what she saw behind the sun was it a puddle

At the bottom of the stair at the end of the hallway

a woman bent over a bucket was

sloshing a wand in the mud she’d made

of clean water and cat litter sand.

matted animals gathered around, dying of thirst, begging

for a sip of the divided drops of water that was clean

or clear

A crawling bewildered infant, no longer staring for some

thing clean to drink