Our legs of yellow skin next to one another,
calves spread, I think of beached whales, the arcs of their bellies,
clean and gleaming. A whale would lie in the shape
of something cold, the body sipping on itself
like a drain. Gravity sucks a whole whale onto sand.
You study Korean, whispering, Muroru?da, muroru?da,
meaning, literally, Water rises, but really meaning to improve or to rise in sap, in springtime trees. Come spring, it will be your birthday.
We will have seaweed soup, supply our blood with oxygen.
Do you know that Koreans do that, because, hundreds of years past, they saw whales eating seaweed after giving birth?
You cross your legs, their hair black and coarse like my father’s and my grandfather’s across the ocean. And do you…
