She stepped among the stars

Searching for shark’s teeth.

Starting on the North shore, now there’s water up to her eyes.

She always said

The freshest teeth

Fall out inside the waves,

And make their way

Back out to sea

Before they crumble like in my dreams

Where she leaves me

Standing on the beach of shattered glass

With vast,

Vast distances to go.

You are the sand.

Molecules.

Small bits.

Sturdy as stone,

Yet you crumble under the feet of each and every tourist that crushes you for holiday sport on sunny days.

One day a castle,

Gloriously and meticulously

Built.

The next a pit,

Sharp edged,

And sat in by children and overweight mothers without suntans.

You are not one of them,

Yet you are made one with them

When they bury their youngest brother and laugh, and he laughs too, and you’re in his hair and then his mouth, and then you feel more separated from yourself than ever.

I am sick

From the longer days

And singing with smoke in my lungs.

I wrap myself in cocoons

Of recovery and pray to my breath

To come in easily,

From across the room.

You’re thinking about that tree

Again.

She’s sitting there

Fogged by memory,

With her hair done up lazy and loose.

Her,

Sitting on the blanket you bought,

Meant for the beach but you couldn’t find

A picnic pattern at the thrift store.

She

Made sandwiches,

The best you’ve ever had because you never tasted them again.

You’re worried she will fade with time,

So you lay in bed with the blanket stained by mayonnaise

And force her figure deep

Into the strands of your mind and

Try to find her in your dreams.

Something has shifted inside of my soul,

And somewhere a worm is thinking of moles

That dig in the earth and lay waste to homes

Created with care and sea green foam.

But I am neither flightless bird nor mole with purpose.

I am man with slow up and down changing speed days wrapped in weeks of something I’m not quite sure exists like creative waves.  Or outer space.

I cannot feel it,

It does not exist.

I cannot eat it,

I don’t yet wish

to know what’s real.

I awoke on the shore

With the fish crawling out

On their brand new arms and legs.

 

They gawked at me and

Stopped to see me cry.

 

Then continued.

 

They soon discovered concrete,

And I sat in the sands,

The sins of their origin

Story, as they erected

Their monuments to the clouds.

 

When one came to me,

Cracked open a book.

And read me his story,

Born from his knowledge of drowning,

Of breathing water for so long,

 

He felt like he’d lost his past.

 

Beginning at the start, I listened

As the sand went out to sea,

He wept ink onto pages as my

Stolen stone visage feigned

Observation.

 

I’m sorry you feel lost,

But I cannot move.

 

____

 

Something about eating algae,

And being an egg surrounded by brothers and sisters

Unthinking.

 

He told me of his changing pains

And the torturously slow growth of

Arms.

 

Astounded at their length

Fins with phalanges,

Carpals on carps,

Can you imagine?

 

I said I could,

I’d seen it all,

But my language passed

Down onto the beach

Like spoiled manna

The next day.

 

He said I looked quite sad,

Sitting, weathered by the sands

Of time and of the sea,

 

And slunk off to the water

Without his gills.