"The shock of it is tidal. Not in that it goes and comes again..but that it whispers. Your ear is a shell; I hope you can hear me. I lose my voice in the waves. Leaning in for reassurance and they pull my feet from under me,
breath and limbs alike striking out for sky. But even lost in airless panic I prefer the ocean to the garden, with its sad retaining walls and haggard irises, seeded on the breath but absent in the blood. The irises are all the
same, but you…you and the sea never speak to me twice with the same wet mouth."