I see you
wading ankle deep
in the shallows’ false warmth
secrets numerous and fragile as diatoms
seeking bare-skinned briny baptism—
wet, sunlit easy sublimation.

But I am a poor, damp deity.
Uneternal, misleading
moon and wind’s inert medium.
Even my ever-collapsing blue—
is borrowed from the sky,
is evaporating drop by drop.

Dive into dark murky depths
yet abandon that resolve
once havoc of me rushes in
one erosive lash
one crest of wild ruinous fury
is not undone by glassy waters,
is not forgotten by quiet pounding surf.

Gentle strokes,
shifting limbs of capable wave
unenough to make you stay
however softly I cradle—
restless swells suspend you,
only just…before you tire.
Or drown.

So, I’ll savor
this buoyant illusion
that we belong to one another—
the brief wash in salt-born chaos,
our spill
of sweat and tears and want.

Shhh, I say, always receding
yield your footing from the seabed
slip into the tangle of you and me—
surrender the weight
of all we cannot keep
and I will try to bear it
for us both.