Across still waters, I am setting
With heavy sails, and a sextant for want.
I am loading my vessel — this Kangina for my love — with pairs of fine stone fruits,
Filling its Two halves to the brim.
They will grow with roots that form a bridge:
Millions of little knots of green, thousands of feet across.
I had not known love had undone so many.
With open palms I will greet every foot and hand,
and you as well, my love.
At night I dream of glass boats,
beautifully delicate, and your voice — the same.
If I were to cross seas for you, it would have to be in such a boat —
with walls built so thin that a siren’s song could shatter them.
This journey I am making silence. I have taken
a vow that I will not speak until I can see your face,
and taste the river at your feet.
It is not a journey I can make again;
this glass ship can only dock once, too fragile
for its final port of call.
In my dream, you are reaching for my helm
from the shore, steering me into the sand.
Upon docking, you would split me between
the Arc of your fingers, opening the fruits of my voyage.
Inside, this poem — folded along the horizon line
Like the sun each night, or porcelain sheets each morning.
I shall fill all rivers with slip, sending clay armadas into the seas below,
with hope that one boat may reach its shore.
The wind sounds on the edge of my glass ship;
I know that a storm is drawing in, and still I stay my course.
The dream ends on hands and knees, piecing shards together on the bank.
With hands bloodied and blossoming into oceans,
and the pieces slipping through my fingertips, returned to sand.
The tide crawls in, taking my love in little pebbles of china.