Nights we became water, you and I,

our words driftwood on the surface.

Beneath, a tide began to slowly

pull you away from me.


Now the bed we shared becomes kelp

anchored on a foot of rock the sea

smoothed, like your stomach

against my spine in the year of water.


An evaporation of longing,

mist rolls in with all the clarity

a marine layer brings. I can’t see you;

all that’s left is a thin layer of salt.

Michele Magdalena Maddox