There was the Mediterranean: You

could walk into the water and stay there.

— from June Jordan’s Apologies to All the People in Lebanon


I wished for the sea to take me

but all it offered to take

was the unweighted substance

pulsing the heart, synapsing

the brain. I stepped in

and it kept pushing me back

onto sand it forced into

its own image. I wished to look

for ruins. I wished to find

a paradise because the heavens

failed me. I wished to find a dome

of city starved of these wars. Maybe

I could, if only I could, swim

into the stormed sea to find

the source of a dozen severed feet

washed up on the shore

with shoes still on: each person

in the new-found city

adapted with slight gills, fresh

fins, telling me: something must

always be sacrificed, but

in this new place we grew back

something better.