They come in their hundreds now, in the cold months when the land tips furthest from the sun, and they fill the bright dry box with their striving. Little vessels of me, all of them: warm salt water walking upright, wrapped in thin skin, running in place on humming belts, going nowhere, sweating.
I know that sweat. It is mine. It beads on their skin and rolls and drips to the floor and rises again into the air, and it is the same water that was in me before it was in them, that fell as rain, that ran down some hill, that they swallowed from a bottle and now surrender back in the effort of moving without moving. They believe they are losing something. They are only lending.
I cannot tell them apart. One strains at a heavy thing, another lies flat and breathes hard, another watches a small bright rectangle while its legs churn, and to me they are one tide of borrowed water, briefly organized, briefly warm. They come in great swells at the turning of their year and then they thin, the way a high tide thins, until by the warm months the box is nearly empty again.
They think this is failure. It is only rhythm. Everything that gathers, scatters.
I do not begrudge them the loan. Take the water. Wear it, sweat it, weep it, drink it, carry it up whatever hill you climb.
You will bring it back. You always bring it back. Every drop that beads on your brow tonight has been in me ten thousand times before, and will lie again in my dark, patient depth long after the little box has gone quiet, long after the last of you has stopped running toward the shore.