We will hide in rooms
of corpses in clear coffins;
our names carved into every surface,
our fortunes told in fish eyes
and sharks’ teeth.

We are frogs in formaldehyde,
puffed up like tear-stained faces,
motel pillows;

we are jellyfish in jars,
hanging like bleached willows;
tangled tentacles dangle, flaccid,
and spectres of the Pacific
will not stir us.

In the mother-of-pearl,
in the birds of paradise,
in the ribcages and tortoiseshells,
we linger, petrified,
and do not hope to be unearthed.



Now we stand like stick figures
pinned to twilight
as orange and blue hesitate in the sky;

starlings swarm across the stuttered sunset,
bubbling and breaking, meandering and mingling;
a sentient storm that plummets to the horizon
and rises on an unseen current.

In that paradise of half-light,
we wait and pretend
that you and I can stay undecided,
and time moves on without us.