This is it. It's almost
nightfall, and I'm lost
on the frayed shore of this
huge secret city—
it's freezing,
The corroded dark seawall is
windtrembling
and scumwrecked—but still
I can't walk. I can't think,
I'm just
rusted. Transfixed here
by numberless wavescrests' urgent
tugging on the surface of the lake,
like razored teeth biting and
consuming all the sky,
like hordes of startled insects darting
panicked across the surface,
like this
humiliating chorus of knife-
silver laughter,
clanging out each of the endless
and formidable
ways I don't love you—
which one-at-a-time flicker, die,
and are subsumed
by the vast mute expanse
that produced them,
by the deep
and immovable
way that I do.
