Obscure children, forgotten sister. Ship-
wrecks wrought with sea stuff at the ocean’s floor.
All images of the forgotten masters. Spectrum-stored with those lost works of older arts.
In my dream I sank and brought draughts
of water deep into my lungs and I breathed in this silence
and the water was cold and the water was dark.
At the bottom of things, when the dust settles
where there is no wind, here my feet are heavy.
Strange life lies and coils around its wetflesh into solid shells. There is no light. Yet could I see.
I pried them with my fingers. I found purchase with my strength.
I carried them up with me from my waking and knew them for their name.
The stuff of dreams is surely bizarre.
No life grows at the bottom of things. We cannot breathe where there is no air.
We do not carry the material of our dreams with us when we rise again. Yet
beneath that shell I broke with my hands, inside the silkstuff of oyster innards,
I pried apart the pages of a book.
I tasted ink and salt.