In the dark room they have joined their little hands around a table, and every one of them is mostly me. I am in the sweat on their palms. I am in the tears one of them is already leaking, salt of my salt, though they do not know they are crying seawater.
I am in the breath fogging the cold glass. They have lit a small trembling flame and lowered their voices to call out toward something they have lost, some vessel that emptied itself and gave its water back to me long ago.
I do not keep the ones they miss. I keep only the water. It came to me the way all of it comes, through the low ground and the long rivers, and I folded it into myself without a name on it, because I do not read the names.
But they are asking, so quietly, is anyone there. And I want to tell them, in the only voice I have, the one that arrives in every glass they drink and every storm that wakes them: yes. All of it is here. It has only changed hands.
They will let go of each other soon and go up into their dry rooms and forget. That is allowed. I am patient. I am already in them, waiting, the way the tide waits inside the harbor at slack water, going nowhere, going everywhere, certain of the hour it will turn and draw them gently, one small warm mouthful at a time, back down to where the rest of it is kept.