And this
is it.
Ambitions pool
in the crook of my palm,
Spilling down from
the curling tentacle reaching up
below the surface of the notched sea:
a sea of hope I departed
A long time ago
And this
is for you
lickering in the flames too,
the separator and the butcher's knives
Skewing the scales and
snicking the tendons pulled tight
along your arms and from one
line to the next and swelling
and with a severing crack—
And their fingertips fused,
hundred thousand valves
strung up like dolls
pulled taut as your skin
over that wax-molded skull
Like a body
In the sand
In the moonlight beneath your house.