Remember, Body

The warmest night of nineteen—

two women in the phosphorescent
water, writing on each other
with the plankton's glow.

First—single syllables:
once, you, breath,

then one of them tries lavender

and runs out of collarbone.

That time of year, dawn arrives earlier
every day. It arrives and arrives and arrives.

One of those women shivers
like a fortune teller
married to a doctor
on the eve of an epidemic.

The tide will roll back out and, with its wash,
any creature without something to hold onto.