To shore

I think back to pulling your hair
from your face,
sticky strands in nut brown,
your lips like the frothy head
in a pint glass,
untouchable, disappearing.

You cried in bed, neck twisted
like a giraffe looking
for the opposite side of a baobab tree,
and I told you that you were beautiful
even though no one
thought so, anymore.

It didn't matter then whether
I was holding your
greasy heart in my hands,
or my own,
they were the same fragments,
wracked with guilt and
blood vessels,
weak sutures in their stems.

We lay in your bed for five minutes
before you choked
on your own salt water seasoning,
blew your nose into the white
eyelet comforter
like it was tissue and you
really couldn't be bothered to care.

And I remember thinking that
my whole world was a sea,
and I, a boat,
floating listlessly,
toward land.