Be strange to yourself,
in your love, your grief.
Your wet eyelashes a black
fringe on brown pain
and your feet unbelievably
sure, somehow, surfing
your own shadow,
that too-large one cresting
just now, too soon for you
to get inside the curl:
the one place in the ocean
where it’s safe. And safe
only for a half-breath
(a fish’s sip with
hooked lip),
only for that one blink
of an eye already shut (tiptoe
to the foreshadow) against
the headlong wall of salt water.