The summer before
her chest hollowed out,
ribs bowing around vacuums,
her lungs ballooning new geometries.

The summer seas invaded body cavities,
feral and chemically sweet.
Her body became a gondola
ferrying pale, diminutive hopes
across the wide strait of your pelvis.

Oceans shifted gingerly,
unborn into the intimate dark
of throats, heart chambers,
marshes between thighs.

She drew the shores around her close, paranoid.

When they got to her
she’d filled her mouth deep
with different types of char: love, anorexia, Quaaludes.
Marrow coagulated and stopped ebbing
with the orbit of the moon.

Her heart smelled like day-old fish.