prayer, face-down on the fake hardwood

in the dark, 4:15 am.

god, find me myself a

slight on this slice of shallow earth that I have buried with a shame that carries no remorse

in its traveler's pack, roaming nomad of a concept that it is. god, this is a breakdown of the breaths

bargained for servitude to a body unrecognizable and the stirring of air in the journey between rise and

collapse, seventy-five times repeated on a crooked back. I am sorry for the fight that follows,

the solitude that boasts shotgun to this sleepless barrage slung back

on seven years of misplaced bets and battlements all blunders

lacking reinforcements, back-up, I solemnly swear I

am of sound mind and body as I say this – sleep. I

am begging, now, body, this sun is blue

around dawn’s edges and this

battalion has so little left

to prove

god,

a

m

e

n.

Before the Tides Turn

In a past life, you drew a doorway on our bedroom wall with typewriter ribbon and opened it onto an uncharted island. You forged a key for the door on our gas stove, from old guitar strings and mismatched earrings melted down. I did not follow you through the doorway, but watched your silhouette disappear into an abyss of drywall and untouched sand for three lonesome nights.

You re-emerged each morning from the doorway with the flush of a new sun on your cheeks, with hands full of pink seashells and blank bottle-messages to be written and released, with mouth full of a foreign bird-song and a laughter I had not heard before, speaking reverently of a moon much larger than ours and a sky full of tidal waves.

On the fourth night, I watched you pack a bag full of empty jars slung over your shoulder and disappear through the doorway. You left the crafted key in my care and promised to return before the tides turned, though I knew from your stories that they were turning always in the hold of the titanic moon.

Now, I have memorized the feeling of standing in a haunted doorway and praying for the courage to pass through for fifty-nine days and nights in a row, the imprint of our key digging into the soft flesh of my palms as I imagine you wandering nomadic on a new shore. Tomorrow, perhaps, I may follow.