Robert Fanning

It's never enough being one. Why do I hope to contain you: always undoing and undone; every place you touch me changes shape. It's not my way to just lie down; to sink, effaced and full. If you swallow me, you're drained, and half of us is gone. Desire's fulfillment is two, not one, or our tidal meetings are through. So hurl your wet force forward, sea, take me wave by wave. Pearl maker, pull me deep; our one's a need, a momentary bliss. What I erect, you spill— castles, boulders, cliffs. My love's endurance grain by grain; your adoration's rain. Touch my bones, my canyon's carved evidence. Even the moon who moves you is stone.

Unraveling velvet, wave after wave, driven by wind, unwinding by storm, by gravity thrown— however, heaving to reach you, to find you, I've striven undulant, erosive, blown— or lying flat as glass for your falling clear down: I can't swallow you. So why have I felt I've reached you—as two reflected stars, surfaced, lie near—as if the sky's close element is one in me, where starfish cleave to stones—if you're so far? I've touched you, I know, but my rush subsides; our meetings only leave desire's fleeting trace. Every place I touch you changes shape. Shore, lie down— undo. I'll fill your thirsty bones with blue. I'll flood your every cave and we'll be one.