the trace bubbling up and under the surface until
like sea foam
You inflate and froth, pop from the inside up,
releasing air and toxin in the same breath
as water, and ripples like the rings of trees so that I
may count your age
or your smell.
You swim through the opaque oceans like a child with
fish limbs
and gills, gulping and tasting salt within and without
flesh, growing stronger
and all the days developing.
(truly without much at all except—
the smoothness of river rocks, the grainy porous
soil where the worms eat out holes of homes
and lie in pools
of bodies wringing like intestines in the sun—
that much, is yours)
My gift is ocean arms that wrap you in coral coils
and call you (dearest, of course) to rocky shores and
certain death: something, perhaps less than the space
between
a rock and water,
and more like that hard and sometimes cavernous place
in between toes and mouths and legs that work.
Don’t build me an ark:
Sing something low and ancient,
and in-between the rock and the water
pare out space—
melon carved out with a spoon—
put me there.