Dead Man’s Cove

The room was filled

by a stale warmth,

the kind that sends

a cadaver of sweat

down the small

of your back.

I’ve started to notice

the unseen heat that rises,

draws the water from my skin

the same way the ocean

currents circle the earth,

and the blood cycles

through me

You were late.

It went in the report.

Sat there, sweating,

pulling at hangnails.

What happens when

the threads of skin

don’t stop at your hands?

Could the doctor diagnose

that you were made of wood,

soaked in salt, sopping wet,

and crawling up the shore

or that you scraped your way

back down through the sand,

slow, to lay adrift on the words

you couldn’t muster.

Does the creature nestled in a rabbit hole

remember its last thought before death

or do the dreams live beneath the hide,

dreams and death and

Could she hear the shallow breaths,

the ones that were almost silent,

when the world had whispered you in.