There is a wax sea horse in our brains

Like a candle it may diminish with time’s

Soft ravage

There is a butterfly in our throat

Like a season it may bloom and then dessicate

I think of love and the violet flowers I gathered and pressed

When I turn the page seeing them flat and leached of color

It feels like the past, whispering from a distance

My mother held a moth to light until it singed

My father held his head in water till he spoke the language of waves

I carry their genes and something that is me

Whirling like veins through marble, static stone clawing paths

For legions rove while we wake and sleep

The in-between, a sweet spot

Those precious years of reprieve

I laid in your warm arms thinking; just a little bit more

I touched your casket before the earth devoured years

Years were spindles in locked rooms without door

No longer embraced or full, I stripped off my sticky sorrow

And took the boat out past safety line, where water is mirror still

Diving beneath memories, my father’s dry hands

My mother’s beautiful eyes, I held my breath

An opening and closing of pain, breathing liquid air

Life turned to pain, pain became life

Once again.