04: devotional

[thermonous]

you remember how to drown.

there is light limning the dark trace of skin
against bone                 the glimmer of smooth scale.
here, aspen eyes and the space                 of their absence,
the opal of fallen stones.

the blooms of heat against glacial scales, mist -
                how they rise.              their tongue bitten
between teeth, their mouth blunted against a vow,
and the sea                   rises like a lash.

hold their fingertips like unknown shapes,
name it worship,               name it unremembering.
                   and their ribcage,              parted,
and         the flute of their bones, the hue of their
batwinged heart.                    the seawater spilt.

the bared land becomes             unfamiliar
underneath them,

and the sky               splinters in lightning.

you remember how to drown.