I brought a bucket to collect
The remnants of your castle
Buried under shores since flattened,
I know you stood
Right here
I know this is precisely where you reigned,
Hands dirtied from digging desperately
To bring our lost heir up to air
Searching has fused my fingers with little decomposed rocks
How odd it is to hold all of you and find no one
And the weight: the weight shackles you like a bedridden anchor
Coat of arms turned into coat of barnacles
Must we tempt the water so?
How we tiptoe around her silky outskirts
With eyes entrenched so deeply in denial of Sea's wetness
They've retreated into shells to keep saltwater from stinging
Crustaceans are soft and vulnerable; that you know
Although we hide; she sees right through
Make-believe; our feeble, friable fortress
And lays siege with the turn of the tide.
A pull like the lure of a siren singing, claws
Tugging at tortoise shell strings in tune with the tear of each wave
Rising rhythmically: when you are beckoned
It is a demand not an invitation.
When the sea feasts on your haphazardly assembled cake
Civilization, the only trace of you will be a trail of crumbs
Travelling down under into caverns as another nameless
Sunken citadel,
And when it crumbles, yes it will crumble
Who will stand weeping above in the fine powder residue, once so proud
Proud like all castles are, up at their pinnacle; with their eyes
Rolled back and flags raised enough to block the harsh burn of the sun
How do they do it? How do they raise those flags high when mine is stuck
Stuck in mud forever at half-mast?
We are not built to last, that you know
(At least make it be quick; quicksand swallow me whole)
There lies a reason
Why sea's sand always returns to her land
Why a single cloud cannot be ours in shifting skies
And it is clearer than water cupped in our bare palms; when we peer at these
Sand hands and these sand buckets and these sand bodies who build sandcastles,
To see it is trickling grain in an hourglass turned upside down
When the trickling settles
I will be scattered across these shores
Govern the realms of sand, far and wide—
But if you happen to trudge through
Precisely where I did, too
O, won't you please
Trudge through
And bring,
Bring a bucket with you.
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