To begin the braid, I scoop three cords from the channel:
The first is the silt of the riverbed, heavy with root-clog and oil,
carrying the memory of ground before they paved it into a cage.
The second is a strand of mercury—cold and toxic—
the glare of the street-level camera, the algorithm’s gaze
that misreads my breathing as a strike.
The third is a filament of moss, a green fire
stolen from the jaws of an eel, lighting up the water.
I cross the silt over the mercury under the surface.
The lens on the bridge is looking for a rupture,
but my fingers weave with the heavy logic of a predator.
I cinch the water tight, plaiting the mud into the pixel-glare.
Look how the river begins to pleat into a cable.
Where the strands lock, the water turns dense—opaque as a jaguar’s flank.
The infrared beams strike it and scatter, blinded by the sudden density.
I am knitting an armor out of a liquid path.
They sit in their clean rooms, logging my trajectory,
indexing each drop of my sweat into their silicon ledgers.
But they are hunting for a corpse, something still.
They do not know what to do with a knot that keeps moving.
They do not know how to handcuff a river
that has grown its own claws,
and learned how to knit its own bones.