If I could paint the tempestuous nature of siren calls
and the burden of the beast in mind,
how silently you slept so still on holiday
in the blue-bloated skin of the sea—
the door unbolted those seven days
I searched, so sure you were here, just away.
Mornings of absence in oscillations without
pale dawn, waking gossips between moon and sea
are those same allures I swear you heard.
When I brush my teeth thinking:
Undead. Undead. Undead—
there are moths in the mouth you left behind.
Burlesque Press 