blue-tin-can-life

A poem for mermaids:

sea foam in our beds

monstrous storm we pick at sardines

blue tin can

anger boils up beyond the glass lashing and striking

bugs come out to play before they pass on down the hill to meet their ends

down the hill into the windswept water I had called mine earlier that day

beer we sip amber fizz minuscule bubbles settling beneath a flickering bulb cast into clay

sea foam I saw in my bed last night tumbling over black rocks that held me

scratching at my mortality

a beetle crawled across my forehead playing a mandolin

a mosquito stroked the harp

I stared up at the wrath more intently

I paid attention:

it’s a blue-tin-can-life

monstrous sardines we are a storm to remind you

of flickering nights when mothers pulled candles out from linen closets and fathers lit them

and you wide-eyed-bug watched the light dance to the song of your sister’s guitar that crossed the vast continent and ocean to find you

even here on this island worlds away from those kitchen linoleum tiles that peeled at their corners

beckoning to never be fixed