Once we were both merpeople, but now you’re sinking and I’ve forgotten how to swim.

This was the third poem submitted to New Voices in November 2010. It was not accepted into the anthology, but I'm posting it by request of several people!

I walk away but somehow
my footprints get scrubbed to smoothness by
the waves of seconds and minutes and hours and
I’m standing near you again,
peering through the cloudy glass to try and see your face.

You let the sand fall on you like rain,
coating your skin until you can’t feel the air.
You’re blowing bubbles from half-closed lips,
beautiful, fragile,
but they explode in brilliant, blinding color
before I can see the words you wrote on the insides.
I wonder if they’re pleas for help.

You’re letting the good days collect in the bowl of your collarbone,
and they’re resting there, unused, their feathers slowly wilting and
turning to stone
until you’ve forgotten about them altogether.

Suddenly you’re too heavy for the water to hold you and
the time-waves are beginning to drag you under but
you hardly notice
because you’re safe and happy in your little room of frosted crystal.
You don’t hear me screaming for you.

I fight against the waters.
I’m letting a thousand glass bottles go
with their messages of hope and despair and love and loss
and mostly of despair and hope.
But mostly hope.
I’ve lost sight of you in the twilight.

I am a beached whale,
moaning my sorrows at a cold and starlit sky
as the shore holds me prisoner.
My footprints are all gone again,
and all I can do is watch you drown.

There was more I could have done.