Blue Animal (II)

YOU ARE

The undertow

I mistook for stillness

The quiet muscle beneath the surface

Pulling whole coastlines without sound

You do not ask

You rearrange

Salt enters me the way memory does

Without permission

YOU ARE

A tide that studies my fractures

Filling them slowly

Until – I forget

Where I end

And you begin

My body

A map

You do not read

Only erase

YOU ARE

Who takes the names

I gave myself

And returns them

Wet

Unrecognizable

YOU ARE

Not hunger

But the patience of it

The long blue waiting

That knows

That I am learning

How to stand

At the edge of you

Without dissolving

I am learning

How to keep one bone

Unclaimed by the sea

YOU ARE

A surge

Of breath

That turns to liquid

Just before contact

Teaching my every nerve to anticipate you

YOU ARE

The pull behind restraint

The place where my hands

Forget their obedience

Again

And again

To be continued . .