after my swims,

the salt always sticks to my skin, leaving its secrets in Braille,
the protruding texture of sand, gifting its text;
but I forever abandon it.
drying out the material and entirely forsaking it,
never allowing it, crusting
and white, to tell its truths with their palpable sour taste
as bitter as the sea.

my skin wilts like week old chrysanthemums, water-less;

craving rivers and ponds
or maybe the artificiality of a sprinkler.
but the salt never comes unstuck,
just absorbs into my epidermis
and nests inside my blood vessels and capillaries
waiting for its chance to infuse into the bone.

sitting pruned and wrinkled, on an ocean dock, feet almost

touching the water, which offers me its illusions of hydration
i think to myself, next time, it would be far better to let you decode
with your tongue
than to let it soak into me.
for soon i will be weighed with it, a pillar of it,
stuck behind the gates of Sodom and Gomorrah,
desperately missing my sea.