I can feel the ocean from the sand on your skin.
i.
We own a wooden glass house by the sea because we love
the way the salt water smells; we stop at the place the water can't reach
and we stand there, looking. You say you miss your hometown
and your shoreline, and your childhood; but that you are happy.
I have always been afraid, I tell you, of building my house upon the sand
as fools do. You hold me.
The waves roll and I look back at our palace
stilted on pillars of salt, our heavy burdens
borne by crystalline trees. I feel the earth
trembling beneath me, its shivers reverberating
along the coast of our feet,
and then I look at you.
From head to toe you are covered in blue,
the clear blue-gray glass shards in your jaw
along every vein, blue
the nerves, your neck the skyline architecture
of figures on a cartesian plane, blue
the rocks of all your periods, the weight
of every word you have ever said numbered, blue
fragments of ink stain your finger
prints on my skin, you are made of numbers
and I have loved them all,
You are beyond me, I say, you are startling
I reach up to kiss you, blue
the shattered porcelain sea.
We own a wooden glass house by the sea because we love
the way the salt water smells; we stop at the place the water can't reach
and we stand there, looking. You say you miss your hometown
and your shoreline, and your childhood; but that you are happy.
I have always been afraid, I tell you, of building my house upon the sand
as fools do. You hold me.
The waves roll and I look back at our palace
stilted on pillars of salt, our heavy burdens
borne by crystalline trees. I feel the earth
trembling beneath me, its shivers reverberating
along the coast of our feet,
and then I look at you.
From head to toe you are covered in blue,
the clear blue-gray glass shards in your jaw
along every vein, blue
the nerves, your neck the skyline architecture
of figures on a cartesian plane, blue
the rocks of all your periods, the weight
of every word you have ever said numbered, blue
fragments of ink stain your finger
prints on my skin, you are made of numbers
and I have loved them all,
You are beyond me, I say, you are startling
I reach up to kiss you, blue
the shattered porcelain sea.
ii.
You touch me, sand dusting my skin and yours, with all
uncalculated unencumbered ease
you take me up, with the crooks of your arms and the muscles in your shoulders
and the childhood kisses seeping out of your soul you say
letting me go
you are my gravity,
that you have built your house upon the rock
that when the storms come, from our neighboring casa nova sea
when it howls and crashes against our shore
splinters midnight the nails of currents
and cracks the sky light curdling darkness
you will not be swept away
you have made your home in me
iii.
My castle stands upon a man,
who has bent his neck and spine and curled himself
fern-like, sitting under the hills of spring, lying
cradled, his diamond edges slicing my skin
yet still i hold him, like fools do
on our wooden glass theater
witnessing the world
an inch above the water
You touch me, sand dusting my skin and yours, with all
uncalculated unencumbered ease
you take me up, with the crooks of your arms and the muscles in your shoulders
and the childhood kisses seeping out of your soul you say
letting me go
you are my gravity,
that you have built your house upon the rock
that when the storms come, from our neighboring casa nova sea
when it howls and crashes against our shore
splinters midnight the nails of currents
and cracks the sky light curdling darkness
you will not be swept away
you have made your home in me
iii.
My castle stands upon a man,
who has bent his neck and spine and curled himself
fern-like, sitting under the hills of spring, lying
cradled, his diamond edges slicing my skin
yet still i hold him, like fools do
on our wooden glass theater
witnessing the world
an inch above the water
