The sea was everywhere until it wasn’t
anywhere near here.
Long drive, full pirouette of the planet.
Dust. You and I still young,
rainbow doubled, spanning the canyon
after storms threatened
to whisk our tent from its stakes.
And it was day, and it was night.
Jackrabbits tore from the grayscale.
Materialized disastrously under the headlights.
Your talent a blaze of median
unspooling in abyssal blackness.
Nematocysts of envy —
Even then my love was barbed.
How much have I longed for
some power to smooth me
as rough waters sand the shards of broken bottles.
To wind-sculpt me as a hoodoo
among the whorls of ammonite
beyond the salt flat.
–
Lisa Raatikainen is a writer and music teacher who holds degrees in religion and biology. Her work has recently appeared in Eunoia Review, U.S. Catholic, and elsewhere. She lives in Vermont with her family.