you hug the ocean into the closed folds of your body / the ripples become your favourite songs / you discuss string theory, sad mitski songs and / how the lonely human body was cradled by seawater so long ago. you dig sea shells / flourishing in the sand and pray to a god / (your body a tottering temple) / to not become a permeable body / to not let grief weather you away

in your eroding home, you pick up a sea shell / the water has soaked up and rusted / and you repaint it / sing a song in its hollow mouth and cry saltwater tears / and you hope that the / sea shell
never rusts /
so that the ocean never lets you break /
away