LATCHING
When I was born, I did not feed
for three days. My mother’s nipples swollen
with mastitis, too thick to latch
onto, swallow around. The nurse hissed the worst case
I’ve ever seen as she milked her breasts
on the living room floor. I cried,
ravenous. How did I know to be hungry?
I, who had never eaten.
I heard a kitten weaned
too early will keep suckling her whole
life, mouth searching blankets, elbows, strangers,
for what she needs. My condition was not caused
by the lack of milk, but its abundance. Bud
too rich to latch. This is my whole life's
contradiction: to be surrounded by plenty,
and still starve
BEACH
You start to notice if you look
at it too close: chips of bone,
pulverized glass, shards of teeth,
whale spine, microplastic nurdles
and grains like clear, dirty seeds.
Of course, the earth
is salted: nothing can grow
here. Evaporated sea flakes
off your shoulder. I catch
it, secret as your smile, the things
you didn’t tell me. You haven’t realized
yet: your naked skin is scorching
raw against this gorgeous graveyard.
SHELLS
You learn first what you can open, and cannot. Like the chipmunk you caught cleaving walnuts, or the otter shattering oysters upon rocks, you discover how to bludgeon coconuts, guillotine pineapples. You forget the taste of a first kiss you can’t talk about. Honey badgers court cobras they sever at the neck with the same teeth that crack tortoise shells, defy lions. They shake vigorously, heedless of envenomed fangs. You grew up feeding from the sea: beaked parrotfish, shucked opihi, kelp paper. Your father’s family emerged from Jeju, an island where husbands kept kids and women coaxed the ocean to open up her secrets: pearls and serpents, crabs and sea cucumbers, cracked abalone and lusty lobsters. How many thoughts did you hide away, calcify, only to be husked or neatly flayed naked? How many friends did you teach to wield a waiter’s corkscrew—decapitate wine bottles—the right way? It’s easy, see: once you’ve opened one, you’ve opened all of them.
THALASSOPHOBIA
The absence of fear is a failure
of imagination. Have you ever dipped
beneath the ocean’s surface?
Sirens lure with the promise of what’s
known, never to reveal the twisting tail hidden
below. The terror of sharks pales once
you’ve heard the heartbeat of the planet’s oldest
song, the blue press of an unbearably
vast embrace. Anything could lurk below.
Not even sound echoes in the darkness
of some subaquatic trenches, not even
light. Who is to say what doesn’t swell
in the deep? I’ve learned to inhabit my own
body. This arm only stretches so far. These fingers?
Mine. They close around the current and brine
escapes between knuckles. In the ocean, lines
blur, only skin separates my flesh
from the unknown. Water unfolds beyond
sight, its body stretches forever. This is the great
fear that yawns under the surface. Do you see it?