cockles

your heart is a cockle shell and i work my hands into pleats of calcium carbonate until i am covered in pink dust and you're nothing but smooth.

remember, you whisper. to nothing, or the sea, or the vastness of being. or maybe just me standing alone in the kitchen.

i'm remembering your gray sweater, the way your hands could circle around your wrists, the way yours bones looked like topographical maps in lamplight. i'm remembering you cooking pasta over the stove and asking me why i was so goddamn useful. because it's hard to leave people like that.

you were always so afraid of being forgotten. of being cast out like fishing lines at night, thin thread across a deepening ocean. you thought earthquakes had the power to swallow you up.

but i'm remembering. i'm remembering you asking me not to follow, not to call, not to whisper your name into dead phone lines at night because you knew i was a poet and poets were prone to do those sorts of things.