You place your water stained,
wave rolled, puckered parchment passions
in a bottle, send them out to the waves
where they rock back and forth again
until sunken and lost
and drowning,
with you and me in tow.

Must we delve into the ocean’s
subaquatic, solitary confines,
where seaweed tendrils wind
around your arms, your wrists?
Desperate grips score pearl skin,
mar it with welts like tally marks
counting, perhaps, seconds
spent ducked beneath the water,
breathless and living.

I.
Look up, to where waves crest
and fall again, reaching for nowhere.
The surface is speckled white;
the light is distant between lucidity
and that ongoing dream of youth.
Had we realized its transience,
we would’ve begged for endless oxygen,
and not suffered consequences
of never breaking for air.

II.
Should you stay forever
in this stale state of limbo,
sinking deeper still
to where the pressure crushes
you and I together, we’d be pressed
Hannah Severyns

into crumbling sand dollars,
value nominal, grains still malleable.

III.
Now, I mark white time in white sand.
My footprints show we’ve walked
in circles, but these redundant tides
effortlessly erase and then repair
and I wonder when we ever stepped,
drenched and shivering,
back onto the shore at all.

They say don’t cling
to saltwater youth,
undiluted and half-bitter;
but we haven’t resurfaced yet
and our impermanent grip
on this transitory existence
must be slipping soon.