I swear affective life is water:
variously formed and regulated,
curiously colored and abounded, but

at heart always its own
wet element. And we
are made of it.

No single thing, or unremitting
motion, it can fall (as joy)
in flashes from high rocks, in sprays

of spectra (by its virtue
sun will be broadcast); or can rise
as sorrow, once and for all,

to muddy the living room, rob
the lover of all breathing space...
Sometimes its affect is

half-bred: a trickle on cobblestone,
swamp with flesh-colored flowers in it,
ice from an eave...What a range

of ringings, lappings, suckings, crashings,
tickings, whooshings, whisperings it makes...They say
(the neuroclinics do) there’s non-stop noise inside

our heads (what we call silence, or
our groundsfor sound)...Maybe it’s water,
what broke so we’d

be born; maybe it bore and goes on
bearing us, as animals and gods themselves
are swept up in its school of thought, and the exploding stars

are only quiet points, afloat. I tell you, even
anaesthesia’s a feeling, it’s
the feeling we forgot...

--Heather McHugh