we said that we knew the deep from the shallow

and we knew the currents of the sea

but yet we still find ourselves drifting in the aftermath of a hurricane

clinging to our shared piece of driftwood

and wondering which will get us first

thirst (for good poetry and people)

or sharks (boys who like girls with big smiles and watery laughs)

people react the dolphins

and sharks the same way:

shouting it out before looking again

feeling either terror or happiness

and their fins look so similar

that some naive people can’t tell the different

~you were my shark and i was that naive once

you were a sky boy

with a smile that was as imperfect as the clouds

and eyes as blue as september sky

and i think that this world is cruel for keeping

the two of apart because you needed oxygen

and i needed to protect the earth’s skeleton

(you cried raindrops for me and i made hurricanes for you)

“stick to my prettier backbone”

i tell all the tourists that are new to me

“don’t leave the safety of the shallows”

but there is always one brave boy

with a smiling that tells me about the sky

who doesn’t listen

you were a scuba diver who lost oxygen

and i had long before lost all my better mermaids

~i told you to stick to the coral reefs

i find myself laying awake at 2:00 a.m.

and feeling like my mattress is a swimming pool

and i am always too far from the side

( i’ve never been a good swimmer)

i’ve been asked why i let pirates

know parts of me that friends don’t

and i let my currents push a torn photograph

up on my visible beach for them to look at

(my brother was so braved that cannon balls didn’t scare him; he drowned believing i could save him)

i found myself a tide pool boy

and blamed myself for the crashing surf

that   d e s t r o y e d     him

(he’s always a part of me now, mixed in with my sand grains)

the greatest mystery to coffee shop philosophers

living on crumbled and scarred green paper leaves

is how someone can drown

on dry land

(we are 60% water-wouldn’t it make sense if in some people, the tide was always high?)

dunes of my skin

are caressed by the sea

and the wind smells like salt

and the beginnings of poetry