Shorelines

Before we met you showed me your name was a truncation

Was it not, you said, like the real needed changing

Now didn’t it? Callie, Marie, Alicia, Elizabeth

A string of words and endless list

Places and family never had

Fitting together into a faceless stab

Once you’re off, you’re off the list

Father, mother, sister, he

Never to speak and now it’s me

Shoved across a paper beach

The tide comes in and memories

Shift to the waters of cannot be

Names that exist in ration

Wounds wrapped in faith

That happiness is oxygen

Vacuumed like quicksand to return

Drowning in the recollections

Of being unchosen

The runaway towns, books, and mirrors

Skipping rocks on liquid woman

Settling is an anchor and an island

Infant arms and a man’s chest

Whispering a tepid tempo of nowhere left

To explore but here

Such a lovely shore