--THERE’S ALWAYS MORE TO SAY, AND I’M SORRY I’M SO WEAK

                                     Diluted

The water is disturbed again, hurtling knives at me. 

Every wall has gouged-out eyes that leak streaks of water and runny drywall crud. 

Yesterday the water was quicksand trying to mug me from the waist down. 

A day before that, an eddy felt me up and slapped my ass.

When I exhale, an ocean booms against my molars, sinking ships, battering the lighthouse by my tonsil bell. 

Seals romp in the bedroom that’s become a shallow lagoon. 

Even when it’s bone dry. the tea kettle won’t stop whistling,

Water, water everywhere, even when it’s not. 

The babies know, doused as they are.  They’re so tiny, still so brand new, yet their split-pea eyes flit suspiciously. 

When you come home from work, a tsunami floods through the door with you. 

You smell like the undertow. 

Your kiss tastes brackish, like a tide pool shuffling dead crabs through the shoals. 

Your words float out as air bubbles, making it impossible to hear.

But that doesn’t matter.  I’m fixated on the new man floating in your glass bowl eyes, a merman just waiting to be flayed.