and if you are careful you may find treasures: sharks’ purses, rubbery, ragged, thick red strands of hair, scales like cut pearls, feathers with waxy stems and charred edges; if you are not careful you may find treasures: shells swooped and hollowed, cavernous, mouths with pink lips, emptied throat, (you will lift it and listen and listen— you will hear women calling from afar and you will turn to the sea and you will run) you should be wary of this ocean, this shifting blue-black with its briny tears, its seafoam of the fallen, reaching, reaching, ever-reaching lapping at your feet, your calves, your hands, your hair (and this is how the sea takes us all, in the end, slowly, with the sand.)
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