I threw myself
like a stone into the sea.
I belonged to nothing
but the wall of the sky.
A train had crushed me
like a silver cup beneath its wheels.
I shone untarnished for a day
and then the cloud
that waits to eat the moon,
swallowed me up,
and I remembered only a kiss,
but not the mouth
that gave it to me.
I drowned in the purple haze
of the water.
A face beneath the waves.
A startled bird
who lost his wind,
and stares blankly
into fathoms of dismembered light.
I never closed my eyes
lest a dream appear
to pluck me from my fate.
I was neither shell or coral,
but flotsam,
waiting
to release its sound,
and then,
a woman’s mouth appeared
and eyes,
that saw no stone,
but a heart full of abundant flowers,
the mouth that kissed me,
and found me in the dark.