mollusk

A clam, its pearl 

Ugly, messy thing

Hiding

All that it found precious

to the blossoming sea it turns in on itself.

Between a rock and a hard place 

my body curled up around grief. 

My eyes so blue from all of that salt.

 

A pillow never held my face 

The way my hands did when my body knelt again–

Again 

When midnight moved itself into a new unit of time

I was stuck there 

In the crumbling, the decay:

The front left corner of my car Into hers the elevated titer.

I receive another decline 

and set the surgery date 

allatonce ashes to

ashes. 

Dust. I am just 

dust.

When I am lifted from my place of belonging again 

And saltwater falls out of me 

The Advocate tends to my marled body on that bedroom floor, He does -

Salt life light dealt by his own scarred hands-

He unwinds the meticulously tied helixes against 

the lattice of the rug-

white ivory opens up to the Son 

Again.

Amidst lamentations and broken dreams 

the Will Be pushes itself through sand grit mire brine 

The flame the heat licks the uncouth edges of me -

the old passes away and the new comes 

Wedging itself between dueling cells - 

a clam lets go 

its pearl of greatest price falls to the sea floor.

Here to stay, here to begin again

He stays

This Advocate who does the holding, the steadying.

The hard places - held ones.