The Saltless Sea - A Poem by Katie

She was drowning from the inside

Her nose started to drip

Her eyeballs were floating

Her heart was damp

Her brain pickled

She opened her mouth and freed a waterfall

Closed the taps from her nostrils

Her bones let go of each other

Until they were suspended 

In the dense sea she contained

There were sharks and blowfish and whales

And Sirens and sea-monsters

Odysseus himself was swimming blindly

The red sun sank and she would settle 

But it rose again and

She'd collapse as the cyclone took over  

Her navel was its eye

She cried for the whales and sharks and blowfish

For Odysseus and the sirens

For a Poseidon so loud and unforgiving

She cried until she ran dry

And then she'd fill up on stop lights, baggage, and stories so worn they lost their fabric of meaning --

How could she trust the ocean bed when it filled so completely and emptied so easily?