The Painted Boats by Sharanya Manivannan

Some mornings I cannot say where I have spent the night
wandering, only that in my mouth is a taste like saltwater
and behind my eyes the memory of watching the beach
breach itself over and over again against the painted boats
guarding a coast in a country where the sun never sets.

You have not been here in years. But across
the table from where I sit is your beer, sweating
a circle onto a sheaf of diagrams that tussles
with the wind. I have eaten enough fish to build
myself something to crawl into to sleep in, an
edifice of bones. But I do not sleep. I pick this
place clean of cartilage, scavenge for succor.

I thought what you drew me was a boat, some way
to bridge or break the thing you could not name.

I trace it in the sand, over and over, and still I
cannot understand. Sometimes the sea stings
when I breathe it in, and I am caged in by ribs, a
sucked marrow, someone’s picked-clean little heart.