To Decapitate the Water’s Surface
I hover
alone
above the black sea,
orange moonstrokes
watching me
from behind
black clouds.
I’m scared of the dawn
and of the woman I happen to be.
I fall.
My greatest fear
is that everything
has already
been thought.
If there were
a thought that could save me,
I would have thought it
by now.
I sink.
The sea hides its dead.
They do not commune.
Only their hair moves.
I taste salt—
the slow water
in the lungs.
Even going under,
I remember Rome.
We drank blue wine
among the painted bodies
of dead men.
I believed
your love could save me.
In Paris,
I bruised my knees on stone,
hands clasped,
incense burning in my ribs,
and searched a cathedral’s underbelly,
room after bone-filled room
for what lies beyond belief.
But the night is a funeral.
The marble lid of heaven shuts.
Now
I cannot
decapitate
the water’s surface.
So I’ll press myself deeper,
down
into that wet,
unbroken circle—
and make
a new art
of an ending.
