ekphrasis of the ocean, lapping at our penultimate summer
above the thick, the oil-green green-blue, staring into the slick of it
and shouting: Hong Kong and The Economist and Jaws. tell me— is there
blood in the water? we sink
into it construct mountains from wave-crests
pretend to believe in god. us veterans
of adolescence, we know lies. we know pretense when we see it, soft lard
forgetting itself off a carcass off white gold skeletons of memory.
in between big days, needle plunged into the subcutaneous,
bathing in fatty acid. we allow ourselves to fall in
and out of age with the tide— sixteen means nothing
but does not fit, uncut cloth. journeys with no names.
sixteen means something to forget,
so we erase the horizon. shout for ahab above the endless placid,
throw our bones overboard.
Gauri is on the edge of seventeen and the centre of the planet, hot and tired and hopelessly confused.