the sea is a metaphor

I.

The sea is a metaphor. You’re not the first

to fear your drowning, when hungry grief

washed in—not the first who lost her feet

to fall, head over heels, stomach whirled,

mouth full of salt. Not the first who couldn’t breathe,

who swallowed and swallowed, while the sea hurled

itself behind your teeth, grasping, all thirst

past your gulping throat. All sharks, all teeth:

You could not hold it in your belly.

                                    The sea is the sea.

You swam out, once, from the white sand beach

till the waves changed to a wide, wild mouth

swallowing and swallowing. Tumbled upside down

into a whirl of belly, bones, and teeth

drowned and spit out with shells on the white beach.

II.

If I drowned--if my soft body went to feed

the sea’s small creatures, tumbled my teeth

(jagged, bleached white for once) onto the beach

to be gathered like shells—

                                    To be palm-tossed

for futures, pressed into sandcastles, forgot—

Regathered (seagathered)--Fragment, I would not

recall eating (like any beast) enough

of the world’s live things--nor of the grief 

I broke my teeth on. No one dies of grief,

but if I drowned, would the hungry things say grace?

Gulped down, drowned, steadily unfleshed--

you’d remember my rough edges, my name

 salt-sharp behind your teeth. And I--

my softness swallowed, my bones washed--I

would not.