The shadow
of the mango tree
has lengthened like a beak, like a rent
in the earth, a chasm.
It has spread. It has come
into our home,
into the little room
of endless talk and silences.
It has brought its thin, black
mid-afternoon gloom
and the cold.
I am drowning, I say to you.
I am drowning.
It is a plea.
It is bloody bone,
the rasp of sea salt
in my throat,
the ocean swirling
in my wound.
and you are sad
because this
is the kind of sea
you were always afraid of.
ever since you were a little boy
in half-pants and you recognised
in your mother’s girlish laugh
the slow, deafening thud of sadness.
It is the sea you ran away from.
But in the end, you wade in.
In the end, you always do.
