Poetry by Ehlayna Napolitano
circe
i have a bruise on my left wrist
and it’s not from the ocean
but i can feel the blood beneath it the way i do
when i am plunged to my neck in the ocean
and my legs are going numb
with salty shivers.
the bruise looks a little like the ocean
with my blue veins beneath it, tributaries,
burst open and spilling out from
the trauma of impact,
its own big bang--
asteroids, volleyballs, the passing of time.
when i’m in the ocean
my legs get the sort of anticipatory tingling you get
when you’re about to strike.
they want to swim--out, as far as they’ll take me,
until there is nothing.
i have been thinking lately of the
seductive sea’s oblivion siren song.
when i am crashing beneath waves,
arising again to the sound of the great Everything,
imagining myself anew but really,
coughing out the sea from my mouth with dying laughter,
i am not new. i am old or new or both or
maybe i am a bruise on the sea,
the trauma of my impact pulling me further out, further in,
until i am healed and disappeared entirely.
if i was in the waving embrace of oblivion,
would i cry out the way i do when my skin is turning dark blue-purple,
primal murmurs? i am not so sure--
but i think i would want us to live.
me, coughed up with a good story;
and the sea, placid as ever with no trace of where i’d been.
i have a bruise on my left wrist
and it’s not from the ocean
but i can feel the blood beneath it the way i do
when i am plunged to my neck in the ocean
and my legs are going numb
with salty shivers.
the bruise looks a little like the ocean
with my blue veins beneath it, tributaries,
burst open and spilling out from
the trauma of impact,
its own big bang--
asteroids, volleyballs, the passing of time.
when i’m in the ocean
my legs get the sort of anticipatory tingling you get
when you’re about to strike.
they want to swim--out, as far as they’ll take me,
until there is nothing.
i have been thinking lately of the
seductive sea’s oblivion siren song.
when i am crashing beneath waves,
arising again to the sound of the great Everything,
imagining myself anew but really,
coughing out the sea from my mouth with dying laughter,
i am not new. i am old or new or both or
maybe i am a bruise on the sea,
the trauma of my impact pulling me further out, further in,
until i am healed and disappeared entirely.
if i was in the waving embrace of oblivion,
would i cry out the way i do when my skin is turning dark blue-purple,
primal murmurs? i am not so sure--
but i think i would want us to live.
me, coughed up with a good story;
and the sea, placid as ever with no trace of where i’d been.
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Ehlayna Napolitano is a writer, journalist, and copy editor living in Rhode Island. She is a Cancer, a sweater enthusiast, and has too many opinions about pizza.
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