In the upwelling where I brought a small bowl, danced,
where bloom and brood were moving
in me, a land breeze. I was locked in the arch of a body wave
licked the sugar from your palm thought that it was salt
found that it was ash. Oh well.
You lost me crawling on the abyssal plain
a chemosynthetic tubeworm. Oh, I’m tired
of sucking the snow down here, of being trapped
in the upwelling I felt it pour out of me
that’s where I left the imperceptible hum
You found me in the estuary, burned.
Lost me fingering the shoreline
found it was all reflection, step back
watch the light pool in my atrophied hips.
Okay, narcissus, take forever. I would, too.
I don’t have to tell you it’s brackish, the water.
You know how it goes when two converge
who shouldn’t touch. The celerity going, going
you lost me, it throttled me. You lost me tucking
your tongue. You lost me waiting for the second
spring tide, you found me. Swelling from the sea
then fawning. I fell back. You break me, breakwater.
When you pull me out, do you see yourself in the albedo?
My planet is a body, soft like an animal.
Tart like carrion dead for weeks, months, a day
That’s okay. You lost me hoping it wasn’t real
punishing my slip with absence—
Oh well. Sometimes when I’m sleeping you tell me
that you love me. Tell me I’m a brood parasite.
I tell you the coast is the place where I’ll die
drinking the embryonic fluid, filling my throat with blood.
Gas rises up and into my chest, filling my eyes
with salt, the womb is where we watched our first tide
sometimes we couldn’t move. The smell was too
potent. This is where we were born. Don’t blink.
You lost me in the upwelling when I was dead.
Did you notice, I was the one sucking on the sea
even rivers can drown, stuck under you so long
the world stops and then starts again. Okay.
That’s just how it goes sometimes
The roots of the tree get stuck, it’s true
All the best parts are slow. In the upwelling
when the glass and plastic and salt
come flooding through your room
and my tepid body, a thing to move.
Oh well. You lose me.
One day I will circle the sky, over you,
swim through the circumpolar constellations
you’ll see me when they go dark, remember
the madness that I couldn’t wring out
no matter how many hands
Squeezed at my spine. I lost me
trying to make myself dry, I was
so wet from the salt, clay, you.
My mouth is full of birds cut out
of heaven, broken voices, cut syrinx
You lost me when you sealed my throat
shut. That imperceptible hum, guess it
was its own upwelling. All things are
tethered by dying cells. I will try, scream now
from the shelves while the branches
Slowly die around you.
You lost me in the upwelling
Where my body stopped—
Where the time ran—
Where we almost—
Where I did—
Where I still do.
I put the heavy thing down, rise through the air
stark and purple with grief.
A new thing that can’t croak
or let out a scream, only a soft hum:
That’s where you lost me.