Blot

It begins with the ink of a dissected squid,
how the dark cloud of it holds its shape
before it dissolves. This is the part
I can explain without screaming.

I have a dream where you’re driving.
You’re always driving. Tell me you remember
the sound the gravel made under the tires.
I’m in the passenger seat holding a heart
in my lap and it’s still beating, I just, swear
it’s beating like a moth against a screen.
This isn’t a metaphor, I want to say, put your hands on me.
But the sky is the color of a fresh bruise
and you just keep accelerating toward it.

Which is how we end up here, in a room I don’t recognize,
a room that might be a boat, or the bottom of the sea.
The windows are painted shut with saltwater.
You are not here, but your absence is a kind of construction,
a house I walk through. A book left open to a page
on tidal patterns, turning itself. A single key
that promises a door. You would think, from the quiet,
that what happened here was forgivable. But the ink
stain on the floor keeps changing its shape:
first a wing, then a fist, then a map of a country
where we both used to live, before the fire.
I put my ear to it, and I can hear the ocean, or maybe it’s just
the sound of a car, very far away, still burning.