i saved the unmarked bottle for the day after
when i came back to the destruction left by the hurricane of your wrath.
i could hear the clinking of glass shards you'd swept away and the whisper of a pale shadow where our picture hung the night before.

the house was empty.
i sat in the vacuum of our bedroom turning twenty stones in my hand.

one by one they fell into me like i was the bottom of a lake and they were finding home again.
we sank together in solitude,
the ebb and flow of water churning sleep songs and darkness.

at the bottom i saw colorless fish,
their bodies slack and immobile.
scales unreflecting,
like peachflesh forgotten under the sun.
only skin and seasickness.

i saw myself awake, wide eyed, entangled
in wet sleeping clothes,
fingers reaching and withdrawing,
mouth opening and closing, resigned to drown

and i saw you:
a mirage
a blurry refraction
vibrating and dreamlike
you scooped me to shore, laughing all the while.
your hand reached into my stomach
and skipped the stones into the horizon ahead.