Challenger Deep

The first time you ever
touched me
your fingers (all
icepick lobotomies)
fell through the broken fragments
of my spine
sunk deep into
bloodied waters
under treasures
fish bones
and broken promises.

There’s a point in the ocean
the deepest one there is
it’s in the Mariana’s Trench
it’s called the
Challenger Deep
and it reaches farther
down
(into your soul)
than all of the
starving children and
cancer diagnoses and
wartime trauma and
dead fish in
the world.

Challenger Deep

It shivers as it crumbles
deeper
rotting teeth spewing
naked dreams and smithereens
of the latest mass shooting
there is no elegance in
death.

The first time you ever
spoke to me
your voice (all
dim corridor altercations)
cracked my earlobe
slithered slowly
up my skull
a tiny fish with
ten eyes
no bones
bore a hole in my memory
and made a home out of the grey matter.

There’s supposed to be
unimaginable things
at the bottom of the ocean
probably something like
Picasso’s lost paintings or
star-bright anemones or
the fragmented remains of dying planets
crying softly for
retribution
there is something shining
slithering
in all of us galactic
you said we are all made
of cosmic oceans but
I am just a
vast Dead Sea.