I parted my own sea and you came to me: sort of unscripted, sort of splendid. 

A loose bolt in the imagination—the very one that got me in trouble sipping 

lilac wine (stolen from you five minutes ago). Remember? You were breaking 

in your ukulele. All those tiny hand movements. I glued myself into a collage 

and you flew. There was something old school about us. Or scientifically 

unsound. We made faces at Czars. My eyes were browning then, and yours 

were shaped like starfish. You never know who you’ll run into as you sweep 

the sea with a slender stalk. I’ve carried my life inside me for so long now, 

never knowing where it would take me, so irretrievable, so stark raving mine.

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Maureen Seaton has authored nineteen poetry collections, both solo and collaborative—most recently, Caprice: Collected, Uncollected, and New Collaborations (with Denise Duhamel, Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). A new solo collection, Fisher, is due out from Black Lawrence Press in February, 2018. Seaton teaches creative writing at the University of Miami, Florida.