All I get is more jagged.
As if by the deaths

of many small mammals
I could make

a trade. Here’s a pile of meat
for the one I want. Here’s

some difficulty for the difficulty
I lack. In a halo of sweat,

I seize one moment after
the moment. When the concrete

abrasion was more like the inside
of a shell, bore holes

where the worms came on through.
Come on, I’m your

clam shell. I’m your smallest
palace wife. I’ll lie down

like a tongue in a tiny cradle.
The waves are only made

of skin. Privacy. The silence
of the interior. Slippery

fish run deeper, run colder.
They are children

with their unsealed skulls,
their hollow bones. The gill

slits I belong with— the blood
pulling up,

then crashing toward the heart.