Her Name is Sorrow

Thank you she said

it like a question

while we walked along

ocean, creek, tributary

— made no difference —

our conversation was all

chemistry — alkali

and acid: elemental sisters warring,

waiting — we their mediators.

Taking my hand, she made me

hold the life gone from a starfish, then took

my arm and led me to Jennette's pier, now decrepit?

She took my eyes and told me I'd be fine

in heaven blind — she took my eyes! —

one in each enormous hand

and chucked them in the sea so I might

see the coral reef's white bones

she mused

then left me on the beachrock

shouting like Bartimaeus.

My eyeballs floated

in the flotsam before one sank

in the drink; it must have been

my weightier eye — serious, tireless, landing

long after in a bathyal baleen

whale fall.

The other — my light-hearted eye

rushed into a shallow current

rich with a community

of pink and purple plastic.

Above the sea, the rest of me sat down

in defeat. Soaked by unexpected waves

— not tears, my eyes were lost, recall — I cried

out with the seagulls

Sorrow! Sorrow!

until I sensed her presence —

mercy, shame, again

she said Thank you — her voice

wide and deep inside a yawn. The tide

came up to tuck her in

to bring the night's oblivion

that makes the day's woes

bearable — its acid

and its alkaline — she slept,

I think. And I awoke.