Blood Bones and Salt

A mother and a daughter

Sat to my right

On a bench

At the top

Of the third flight of stairs above the ocean,

And it made me wish I had watched that sunset alone

(I’ve always felt that it’s best

To mourn when you’re alone,

Even if you mourn because there’s no one there).

In that house

That we shared

For that one week and a day,

I had laid in that bed and although she was next to me,

Reading her novel

(The second one since Friday)

I remained in myself half asleep half awake

And I saw that guardian lighthouse standing,

Standing tall to welcome to comfort.

But then I realized

It was just the picture on our sea-green wall,

A painted picture too picture perfect to be real

And I watched as a moon-white moth crawled across the canvas

Feeling cautiously

With it’s antennae feelers.

It felt the colors as I watched so intently

And it touched its wing to that of a gull frozen in paint,

In one moment in time,

And my mind left that moment

To see one other,

One other that existed only to myself:

That seagull chained

To the sea

By shackles

Made of seashells and seaglass and crabs.

She’d fly till she’s grounded,

Struggling against the binds that choke her

Beating against the wind that fights her

Screaming against the world that leaves her

Alone

With no one to bring her back to her nest.

I watch

As that gull,

That poor dead gull,

Attempts to break those shackles.

The click-clack of those shells made a chain

(A chain to ground me alone)

Are the same as the clicking

The clacking

The rock-sharp rattling

Of her bones as her skin falls off.

Salt roughened feathers

Lost one by one

Are swallowed by that thin film of warm water

Resting

On the first few feet of that ocean surface

Before the storm.

Her skeleton is restless

Her heart still pumps

Fleshless eye-sockets, seeing nothing,

Nothing at all, blind to the world that left her

Alone:

The way I feel though she’s sleeping right next to me,

Her back to mine

We share eachother’s warmth,

For that breeze blowing through our open window

Gets quite strong at times.

I love her like a sister

(One closer

So much closer than my own),

But often it seems we’ve drifting apart

As of late (nights

Laying awake sharing talking telling secrets

Shared with no one else

Are dwindling in number):

A daydream disastereality.

And again I see that skeleton gull.

The scent of blood, bones, and salt

Draws near the dogs,

Fur sopping

Wet

With the sea

(For they still have their flesh).

Sea-foaming at the mouth,

The moon is reborn in their eyes

As they glare-

They glare-

At that poor dead skeleton gull

(Oh how I hate when they stare)

In spite

(Glaring is worse than the fight

On that shore in my mind).

How I wish I were alone

In my own dead skeleton world,

A shelter of bone on that shore,

My temple by the sea,

Such and ungodly fixture,

Crumbling.

How I wish I had company

In my preferred solitude.

Take the contradiction for what it is.