Ways to Leave, or Waves
The lilies are losing their petals
in pairs and I linger like resin in glass.
Every possibility waits at the center
of a sunflower wilting
in the vase atop my bookshelf,
beside the uncalibrated clock
blinking an old time,
a loud green like algae.
All this wouldn’t have happened
if we hadn’t crossed the sea.
What was it all for? – to smoke cigarettes
on some balcony and hear waves crash?
Two seagulls fly from one horizon
to the other, in opposite directions.
I feel the early morning in my brittle bones:
yucca fibers and sour milk.
Splatter me across your blood-water sunset,
your curdled clouds and ocean veins, your silhouettes
of palms splitting duplexes in two, your briny swirls
of Van Gogh air, that gold-dappled moon.
Let the water drown you
late into the night and sleep.
Deep through coral and chain
yourself to the seabed.
Saturate the mind with good,
with leagues, with bioluminescence,
limp and floating helpless in a world
too busy flooding to love you.