the mountain
throwing myself into the grey salt turbulence
of our marriage like a drunk and reckless sailor
after a poetry book thrown overboard
who is not afraid of death, I gulp and shiver
and swim and swim & don’t wish I was dry
& don’t wish I was warm & don’t wish I was
on the ship & don’t wish for no jellyfish
or no sharks & don’t wish I was sober. outside
of this metaphor, we are sober & wrecked with
grief. we are considering a decade of making
nothing but mistakes. inside the metaphor, the salt
pours into a hundred slices in my arms and legs
from when I crashed through the brush
on the way to the harbor. inside of the ocean,
I am pushed to the brink, where I realize
that death is not what I want and divorce isn’t
either. what I want is to swim until the whole
Pacific is sucked up into the atmosphere
& the dinosaurs return to earth & the butterflies
tornado around us and we wake up to our new selves
& the mountain is revealed. I want to rescue the book
and climb back aboard the ship.
***
Author photo courtesy of author
