You walked out of the water
like a mixed up and broken
some-sort-of-toy washing onto the sand
and slinking away, because it didn't want to be
had but it had to be noticed.

You came back bloody
because you had got on the rocks
that shouldn't be gotten on,
and swam in a sea
where you were a stranger.

I was eight years old
when we lost my brother to the ocean.
My mother blamed my father, my father
blamed the weather, and I
squinted at the horizon.

Out by the jetty my mother still combs
the new tide's haul, looking
for a ring that slipped off my father's finger
as he climbed into a boat brimming
with the heads of his blond brothers.

Swept away before her hand broke
the surface of the brine, before
the red sailboat with white sails left,
before my father came home
and my brother didn't.

He got lost at sea because
he wanted to. He traded
his land life to me, and I gave him
my trust in the ocean,
where you get what you choose.

When you drifted up
and I pretended to mend your wounds
I was searching your blood
for the salty secrets
I had not heard in years.