We gather our bodies from the sea
this was the time of distances and lilac light
thin voices carried on orphan wind and a fulsome trawler’s music
purring safety-lights wintered overhead with a disco sweep, the black
rocks undercut a shy Autumn sky and kept the dreams from listing
here, lives saved from the dark reef and songs sung
for those lost under stone and bubble
and our hearts went rummaging, gravel in the folds
of our knees, dreamleaves falling in our palms
brisk like a nob of Oolong poured too quickly, our breath
made visible in the words’ updraft and uncertainty
here we fell with a soft scratch, the tiny hurt of promises
netted in the catch of one another’s heat
what is forsaken braids a lifelong covenant
sound thin as rain tapped the buckles of shoes, rows of vows
in the hike through the storm betrothed along the cliff walk
north of Hualien the Pacific growled, razored and our hearts rumbled in the gale
down the sheer sliding our names pebbled forever
and forever and forever clinking, kerthump
the landing and the child’s dream
tides and toads, tides and stones, a time for leave taking
remember before all this on the side of a road
we carried stony carapace and skin as a prayer
our bodies scampering up from the beach
our bronzed and bruised legs buttery from the pull of gravity
as the sea’s choir threw up shells and a fisherman’s memory
the trainmaster weighed only what the passage allowed, crumpled
in the cabin the cartography of children
we’d picked at the earth with blue sticks
grief inked our fingers with volcanic ash in the breeze
I spit out your name and the world tasted of your mouth
the old woman selling trinkets in rust, song out in English
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas to you
as bones gathered at the bottom of the old tree, the sentry
on the precipice, the cicada wings and rusted cans hushed for a moment
along the path Eastward and we stared long and our hearts
dipped deepdown into the faceless water while language rose from the muck
far away, something once spoken in flourishes across bedsheets
have we both forgotten
the humid words of East Asia hummed along the spine of this place
how the pictures of Taiwan traduced description
how grief scissored along the mountain range, North to South
you reached out as I licked the long scar tracking your chest, we knew
we were home
as we gathered up the glass pieces, you and I,
each nib and syllable of the rhyme and the broken sea.
