Sunken Whales by Emily Sager
Read by Conner Arnold
When you close your eyes
your clogged senses clear
into crisp symphonies
of lustrous waves
reaching and holding
stroking steadily the
beaded beaches that
break the ocean into
four.
Your eyes play films
on the back of your lids,
like the back of your hand
you know the way
your feet sink deep
in the soggy sands of
shells, clams, crabs,
salty tears that
tear your eyes wide
open.
Seawater and kelp
can’t keep under a hot
sun.
Water boils and
salt sinks into
a slope at the
bottom of the ocean.
Slide down and
you might just find
sunken whales like ships,
crinkled crisp coral,
and crunched time
that you could not
afford.
As a child you scooped
water out of the body
like a ladle
in your hands
and let it drip
off the edges, wedged
between a reflection you
saw and a feeling you
forgot.
Drank it all and dried your
hands as sands swallowed
by gulping gulfs offshore
and vaporized waves
wash away.
You thought you owned
waters unlimited with boundary
thrown, now with the discovery
that the ocean’s limit
is you
