Down the line, a quiet, crackling, broken voice
A telephone held, knuckle-white,
“He was strong. Something was wrong.”
The details assaulting
Unprepared: my objection, too slow
“His head never dipped below.”
“He was, at all times, kept afloat.”
– which is assuring, I suppose.
Where a cursed imagination, had taken what was missing
and filled it with troubled fiction
which later re-read with such terrible conviction
the examining; the salt of the heart too heavy; a reality
I couldn’t fully grasp, just like his hand reaching, reaching,
whilst calmly speaking of this dark thing encroaching,
the final drop of the anchor, this thing he had loved like no other
impressing upon him, as it impresses upon me now –
the hot tears, the salt of my sea,
blocked so that I cannot breath
the physicality of the loss, presenting
in the weight of my eyelids, swollen as
I stood alone in the desert
and cried out an ocean.