Unhooking the Lip

First published in Red Room Poetry’s Writing Water chapbook, November 2020

for Courtney Sina Meredith

She cups my name in her hands

like an undersized fish, unhooks

his lip, slips him back into shoals

beneath our feet that’ll eddy him off

to someplace beyond reach. She invites

me to close my eyes in this too-bright

room where there is no running

water or waxing moon. I hear it weir

across rocks, vortex in my ears: her voice

is a raised hand out of the rip, as if to signal

drowning yet guides me until we’re neck-deep

She asks who I think about when I picture

the ocean. I trace his voice, watch his face float

to the surface. She curls a phrase, Ka kite ano

on the sandbank, presses a mask to my mouth

We wade out to the wreck, peer through

cracked glass, shine a light into the belly

of his demise. She brushes my hand over

a new fish, mouths something I can’t catch

Stroke its gills as I feel a tail thrill against

my wrist. When I open my eyes, she holds

the hook. There is blood on the line.