(Stop and bow to silence.)

You hold me the way the soil
holds the bones
of those we’ve learned to mourn
in private:
eternally & quiet
with an airy tightness:
the way the heavens hold the pious,
the mob holds the riot,
the way the ocean holds all that falls below
that deep blue surge of
sea.

I drag you under to show
you what I’m made of.

“squall”