Marriage in Drought

Pa, can she have her ocean back?

It was thrown down my throat

when I asked you if I could land

on your words and not on your hand.

But because I was your first son

we had to smell the prime perfume

of our mother’s blood in our mouths.

She made sure we didn’t choke.

Pa, can I have my ocean back?

I didn’t dare staring in debts

of papers piled of manuscript

words wishing to earn your money

but because I was your first son

I dared drowning in your ocean

as she counted her cobwebbed dry

shells; powdered dust of shattered ones.

Pa, can she have her ocean back?

her young blood was taken by me

as soundless woman was told:

her human meat was all her soul.

Ocean, thy words sound so tender

like the womb I once inhabited

unto my birth, red and crying

waiting for her to be free.

“The children, the veal, they stand still
because tenderness depends on

how little the world touches you.”[1]

I lived inside you, my ocean inside you.

Pa, can I have my ocean back?

So, she can be my mother with

ocean water in her undead

full of navy glow deepened.

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[1] Vuong, Ocean. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Penguin Press, 2019. p.156