The Returned

The sea walked all over us
as we dug shallow ditches,
thick claw-like calloused tips
scooping pockets off the foreshore,
to return that which started this frantic rite:
washed up scores of fish bones
caught in throaty jars, illuminated,
laced with uranium and violet.

An alien truth of us, our beginnings.

To appease the deep we made offerings:
of broken dolls, defunct diaries,
lapsed timepieces, unsung bells,
bundles of return to sender letters
returned more than once.

Our reluctant parents watched
from the landing window,
fingers splayed against cold glass,
two incidental siblings, resolved
chagrined eyes tracing our wonky rows,
our watery graves, our scattered debris
of a life lived less ordinary.

As the silence plunged all around us
we endured moonlight falling
on our raised veins, wispy threaded
lifelines marked and bruised and trembling.

The Returned

In that flare of light and dark,
crumpled faces close to the drift,
we were not so different at least.