Refracted through your tide-washed hours, this prince drifts through algid brine, kelp-wound: his ship has foundered in your sky. For his sake you discover land, build the castled waves wherein he breathes. (He’ll wake

to a woman who walks like rain, and marry your reflection in dry eyes.) There is a shore where each step leaves a print of blood: all along the undertow was listening for the shadow of his sail, the reefs held out their coral

blades. Gaze into that mirror (above you sea, a sky below) until the morning you fall through: light changes color and direction for your sake. Make your bargains with some witch. There’s a conch shell waiting on the sand

to shred your sole and salt its roar into your landlocked ear, a shipwrecked whitecap is calling you home. I could lose myself in those waters, break like a wave: after three hundred years nowhere

to be found, the knife still dark in my hands, in my feet and my mute tongue. Call me that foam.