At swim,
girl waits with gun.
She's a half-formed thing,
having entered into it
motherless.
The fault in our stars,
the night sky with exit wounds,
is left to the grace of
a god of such small things:

fabulous disarray,
perilous notions.

It's a common tale
in tragic literature,
but here it now floats.
The red tide washing
back onto shore
as granules of sugar,
sweet as petrified honey
in the hallowed out trees:

in which we begin
to not understand.

The sea breaks its back,
lingering like the wet gossamer
of her nightdress,
covered with the scent
of stillbirth,
and the illimitable
shut-in trials:

they arrive in waves,
she weeps every time they're "borne."