Pencil settles, rests quietly
Allowing sweeter things
To draw me away…
Soft greens and whispers
Outside a painted wooden box,
A squirrel gathers my attention
Bouncing a Willow Oak limb.
Air hums with voices
Of nature, not French.
It does not bend my mind
Around uncomfortable edges
Of scientific graphs or tables,
Or complicate me with shifts
Of numerals, punctuations, values unknown.
Virginia once told me
Let a dog lick your wounds and they will heal.
Faith lies unshaken behind a statement like that.
She would believe me if I tell her
The sea calls to me.
Whispers on breezes,
Sand burning the bottoms of my feet…
Even in my sleep
Cries of gulls, emptiness of conchs,
Creakings of slats of piers half-saturated with salt
And history and life,
Whispers carry across miles and wing
Igniting the colors that live inside my skin.
The wounds that cover me
Long for her
She stings and heals,
Stings and heals,
Stings
And heals.

 
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