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?