K.M. Hanslik

blue body

My anger and the weekends promise
me a justice they cannot deliver. I try
to consider them with a shade of hope,
hope like corals, like lake beds, the shark’s
great fin. I dream an endless watery dream
of wandering: ocean gulleys I might explore,
shining stones I might gather. Some days
I forget I’m un-gilled, flirt with drowning.
Dream of a place where there’s enough
blue to hide my dense body. I want
to become shallow as a creek, vacant
enough to fill with clay. Instead I watch
the deep sky-filled pond as dusk settles 
upon it, the moon soaring to cast her
hazy shadows. She does not know what night 
it is, only that she must keep rising.