Over a Late-Night Call, My Friend Remarks That He Likes to Watch Us Suffer

The first time the ocean found its way into my lungs, I felt my rib cage become

a red balloon. It engorged

and popped and as the surfboard

tumbled away I felt myself flying,

stitched into the ocean like a bird on a tapestry. I thought I would become

another happy bubble lapping

at my mother’s skirt. Even long after my parents found me, a heaving,

disbelieving sacrifice on the wet sand

the ocean remained. It left a piece

inside my mouth, a second skin breathing

across the expanse of my tongue & ever since

my words have tasted like a laboratory. As did the words

of all my similarly sea-borne friends. Each conversation

became a trade, a scathing clink of syllables

for a net of spinning white shrapnels

nestled between the incisors. Such is the kinship

between squirming flies: we will discuss the injustice of putting

bad arugula in salad but will not go on hunger strikes

for freedom, and much to the horror

of the cobweb-haired we will even fashion memes

out of mass destruction. Everyone in the world

deserves a sprinkling—the lunch lady. The bus driver. The defiant girl

with the skirt half an inch above her middle finger.

But beneath the un-mined scabs

is the soft prickle of something that has eluded us. An almost had it, or him, or her. It is the emotion of something inflating so quickly inside your chest you will let it loop

around your hand & lead you anywhere

on this planet. It is an itch

dangled at the edge of your mouth,

enough to make fate taste like fine home cooking. It is the act

of furnishing shooting stars out of the feeling of being crushed. It is the act of making a fist underwater and throwing it

at the dark shapes ahead. The salt of the earth

is now the light of the world—we are diving, pushing our heads

back through the waves. Spitting shells & thread until

our lips, too, birth strangers.