celestine

let's wade out to sea

just us------- and sink like stones

or float like pale bone balloons

you & i - pink with strawberries

eyes like coins (or a ring

from you, a bracelet from him)

the seaweed making our feet heavy

and our big fat mouths water

o- if you were, celestine, and i

proserpina

between every plump and crease

paper thin eyelids, be my parachute

for delicately sculpted marble tears

for my lack of motion.

i drown out the streetlights through curtains.

you are nothing like the steel-jawed traps i escaped.

whatever burden they hooked to my back

i bear now without gauding; and should you emerge, we'll dissipate,

hand in hand

into the green green sea