Odyssey

No shipwreck. No life cast away from.
Cloaked amniotic, I waited in the atoll.

Whether I opened or closed my eyes,
the flesh-colored night was ever falling.

Curled to myself like the crook of a staff,
how could I distinguish loneliness

from communion? No constant raft
was my body, assembling, as I was,

from coughs of water. I returned
to an island I could not remember

leaving. Before killing a goat, I would
sing into its ear, warbling of a place

as a conch does the ocean. I never
did finish becoming a man.

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