your hair’s wet because we went night swimming
the mothlight furring my forehead
together and pulsing with the spectral heave of the moon
these tides knowing me the way i know myself
pensive and cold and slick along the insides.
hoarse siren song and the fuzzy swan-curve of my neck
the waves carving me into the rind of your back
the shell of something once living hot in your mouth
sunbathing in the dark, smashing sea glass with so much
care and wearing it in the dips of our fishbone bodies
drinking warm soda with our flapping caved-in lungs,
kissing the water and capsizing in our own holiness
sheeted over with salt, dissonant with our hands,
pruned and pink and tender from years on the sand
conscious that i love you like a skin-psych
these rough and seismic things only making us softer.

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Shirley Wang is a Chinese poet and enigma in the San
Francisco Bay Area. She is art editor for Kerosene Magazine and
tweets @thursdaygrls.