― begins at late morning, when bruise corals sea
-rch. A greenland shark carries four hundred years
of your memory. You are historied, (calcium)
in its ocean flesh. Yesterday, I swam towards you
breastroke ― dove against absence and riptide
to the crest of a billow where I thumbed
your heaving pulse; held my breath and counted
the swell of its pace /past. I am counting still.
Tomorrow,
the drums will call for us. They will rhythm
to the wet sound of the word ancestor, and We
will sew salted memories into our waving temple,
the Atlantic, until sand catalogues catch
moonlight on their ivory shivers. Archive arrives
after the body. Recollection: cast a scar into spectred
waters, watch purple wax from funeral to Black.
- F. Seck