A Stone the Size of a Peach

Who has heard your voice in weeks
But you? A robed figure, blue as night sea,
Skirts the hillside, leaving behind
The town square, the bell’s dominion, growing larger
Into your stripped doorframe. By now you’ve rolled
& lit your final cigarette. She lifts to you
A stone in one palm, rough,
A mollusk spire spun into the other.
You hear the ocean locked
In the stone. The shell crashes for you
Only static. She studies your face
For more than a moment. You sink
Into her face of shadow, the small white glare
On the lower curvature of one eye.
You want her to speak, want to know
Why she seems like a sister,
Why her breathing matches yours exactly.
You pull in breath like a wave receding
Though she turns toward the square,
Toward somewhere well beyond it, past land
Bending to sea, out into the middle of it
Where she stands. The warm wind slides
Over you like water, possessing the pages
You weighed with a stone the size of a peach.
No matter your belief, your body
Is a time machine, & the sea, time.
It has no answers, though it carries you.
Build yourself of water, angles never seen.