Please do not wait for me.
Let me,
with my sand and pail,
erect a wall against the sea.
Let my legs,
with their blue porcelain veins
stretch out on the sand.
Build up dikes
like the trailing of snakes
stretching in the sun,
and the sun in turn,
bleaching my hair
into the petals of a flower.
I am home,
by the cat lake of my people,
by the gray swells of their old dreams.
I woke up here.
I was born in the foam.
Every atom of my soul
contains a grain of its sand,
the open ache of my heart,
the lost swarm of its flies,
the swallowtail resolve of old warriors,
lost fishermen,
young mothers.
They join me on this beach,
they live in its light,
and walk as shadows down the shore.
This is my home.
Let me stay awhile.
Go on,
and tell the world
I will catch up.
And if I don’t,
you’ll see a white gull above the water
swooping and arching in the breeze,
and it will be me.
I couldn’t leave.
I couldn’t die.
I simply became
the child of my home again.