Elegy Surrounded by Water
by Sara Eliza Johnson
Out at sea, each night is long. Each night
has one sound I know:
the moon against the water
like your cheek across mine in another life.
I am finding a way
to reach where you are.
I am thinking of lighting the voice on fire.
Of lighting the dark oil of the sea on fire,
each drop a note singing the daylight up.
Listen—I am trying to send you
a human sound, which is bones
cracking to bend an arrow back, a long whistle
across the field
of a body you remember
because it remembers yours. We are built
to live in each other. This means we are built
to ruin. Each night
I dream back another piece
of you—an eye,
a ligament—and each day
wake on the water with another hole.