Like all sea witches I’ve drowned
more times than I can count. With each wet exit
I wonder if the water will let me back in.
There will always be another lover, another lapis
incarnate. My body
condenses: wrinkling tidewater, mollusk sludge, squid-ink desire.
Between my hips, nets widen and thicken.
I am just another floating woman, full of knots.
Bloodpull undoing, slow soaking
required to sluice
out the silt. Between muck and surface rupture
grows the moon’s shyer twin: black
pearl, quiet eye that sleeps
inside me. If I open
to that under
world what wouldn’t I
undo with an oyster knife?