shoreline

And the continents were never enough;
the land was never enough.
The sea was organized chaos,
bottle-green aggression, rarely
warm. It was a hand
that caught you around the softness
of your middle, just below the ribs,
squeezed your blood, shook
the cocktail, wiped your sweat.

You never came out of the foam the same thing.

Carrying the dead in your hair,
the sloughing left behind
where it was waist deep, a gray-blue sea
snake gasping
on shore, new skin
slick, eyes on fire.