To keep a semblance
of a shape, it’s necessary
to piece things together,
amalgam of memories
of how things were, of how they should be.
Dolphin. It won’t hurt
to give it fur
to let it smile with bovine teeth.
Words are just words
fluid, like everything else that failed
to come up for air.

That thought dissolving
into a flurry of bubbles,
we all agree that stars
might have been round too
and buoyant, like debris,
like lost leaves clinging
to a tint of green.

We stick to each other,
little globs that we are,
tears and sea salt mingling,
no sense of when or where
the ocean ends.
Our feet can be anything
that feels solid enough,
the wreckage of a tree
uprooted by the storm surge,
the horn of a house
that tried to keep afloat.

Flesh or metal.
Soft or hard.
In a world of water
everything is mud.