Rebbecca Brown

at the end of the sea

the buoyant slick of you like a moment slides by
    floating
on a wave where fins find you beautiful

we waited when the water rolled for you to sway
    away
from shores of sand and dryness

as you floated further out your eyes would shine
    more glass
like black and it was morphine

that moved your mouth slowly into a tighter tighter o

the fish favor you in their blue green
world where all your moments are one large wave

when the sun shines you to pieces
you gleam light like in spaces and we smile on the
    shore

we are dry and afraid but happy
to see you iridescently quick and breathing once
    again

while only

i looked for you like circles look for edges
as if you were not a pronoun not
plural you – singular

the only thing i remember are your likenesses
to rain

moments upon moments piling their electric
ends into (the water slicks past on gravel and
    asphalt
riverbed) finished point and receding

time revised into a simply structured sentence:
– – The ocean is retiring.
– – The dogs are on the sand and howling.
– – Tomorrow, the day we were waiting,
        for.

of course the roads kept trundling
over/through/from
end to end endlessly (over, through) and how

we, the pronoun for water

raw knuckled and looking
for more than birds’ broken backs & beaks
night along day rhythmical

happenstance i am not
you were not and are (the fields drowning
themselves 
in their own sleep) not only

only and pining the distance
spaces while

body language

the way gestures grab and make
you the way you flick and fumble
your patent laugh lingers

faithful as a filament yet you
can’t place where it came from

red yellows you thought you
forgot in fall followed in the way
you perch your hand up

the acute beautiful glues you
your self soft flesh and finger

did you laugh like that when
you were young and whistled
each low note somewhat slanted

your slight slide of hip skims
like the character of rocks in summer

your inhales scar and mark
you the way winter slow and steady
recalls loss with a blush

Rebbecca Brown’s work has been published in Northridge Review, Eclipse, and American Literary Review. Her work has received honorable mention from the Academy of American Poets and the Rachel Sherwood Prize for Poetry. She lives in California.