Everyone Here Is a Tourist

Shipwreck and seaweed choking the tide. My anatomy,

undone as flotsam, tipping between

the hands of plate-white waves. Only ice. I wish I were

cold. When the pain was about the size

and color of a plum, I used a lot of positive self-talk.

I felt the water at my throat but I

coaxed it into smoke rings, coaxed those

into Hiram in May, which means,

essentially, daffodils. Pity I lost hold of that.

The papers said we’d make it

and I was drunk enough on hope to believe them.

The day I died I told you,

I might be ready. Ready or not. Was that a sin?

I told you, with a silver dollar

stopped over each eye, the horse-drawn shadows

have stopped circling

on the veranda. They stagger toward me now.