Come, you gone one, do come. Feel at home. This is where you belong. In the elements, in my elements. Do not think me water alone. I am water but not water alone. I am many things. So many that I have lost count. So many that you shall have to count. For you have made me this countless thing. You are the one. You believe it is I, but you it is who it is. My maker. You it is who made this thing of me that I did never begin as. I began as a stream, you made a river out of me. Glory be! What a river. A river of what things! Save me, save me from myself, from what I have become. Or what you made of me.

You made of me a deity, of me, a prancing unbridled thing without a care, of me virginal and of my careless velocity, a thing such as no other thing, a thing that arrived and was gone, and thing that never ceased, not to arrive, not to depart, and a thing that forever shone of pristine things, such a thing I was.

And what a thing you made of me. A deity. The licence became all yours, the responsibilities all mine. All your licentious things you came and lumped onto me, all your filth, your lies and your sins, your excretions and exculpations, the blood you drew, the sweat you extracted, the tears you wrung from unconsoled hearts, the noxious carbons you abandoned in hapless palpitating souls, all of it. That is what you made of me. Deity, Maa, Benevolent Receptacle of Effluence, I am, now, Effluence. I have received enough. Look at me. But don’t look at me.

I may no longer look the shape of a river. Not here. Not now. I may look some other shape. But that’s only now. Look at me. But do not look at me. This is not me. This is not who I am. This is not how I look like. This is not the shape of my course. But this is the course of the shape I am now. Look at me. But don’t look at me. I am not me. I am now what you made of me. You cannot bear to look? But of course you cannot bear to look. Who can bear to look at how you look in my waters. Look into my waters, and don’t shut your eyes. Look, and you shall see yourself. But who can bear to look at themselves, when it is my waters they are looking at themselves in? They do say, don’t they, that it is tough to see your face in boiling waters? My waters are boiling. Look at me. Or don’t look at me.

You can’t look at me. Before you come to look at me, much before your gaze arrives upon me, you will see things that will drive you away from me. The approach to me is no longer an approach, it is a prohibition. I do not have a bank, or banks; what I have on either side is bankruptcy. Look at what used to be my banks and you shall understand. It is all dead currency, wasted stuff, of no use any longer. Or perhaps there is use, but it is not use that I may be able to explain to you. Will converse with dogs and vultures if I were to explain the uses of things that now lie on my banks. I am to learn their tongue. Fortunately that will be easy, to find a tutor in the language of wanton predators. Such is this time, a time of predators in plenty.

Ignore my entreaty, violate my plea. Do look at me. This is how I have been made to look. Do not believe this is me.

I am not this. I am not a shape. I am not a figure. I am not static. But I have been made to look all of these things: a shape, a figure, a static thing. I am not this, although it is true I look like this. For no fault of mine.

It is me you drink

I am the purest of the impure

I know not what you think

No more my business what you endure.