I’m sure I was once told about the ocean floor,
now believe me, I see it,
am living there in the unfathomable blue
and black, as though the wasted ink of the world
is a swarm meant to hold
the very lost, the going and gone.

If my throat is dry, forgive me,
for there is little left that shines,
has been rubbed to an almost-new sheen
for my language has shrivelled like fallen roses,
the dreams, waterlogged, a charcoal tinge
creeping in at the corners.

Perhaps it is the next necessary,
to douse the lungs in the spent blood
of everybody who has come before,
for there is no swimming, just floundering,
a fallen mannequin with a hyphen of light
one stretch too far away.