The sea wrenched him open, entered him
until he was separate no longer,
sent him on the current-road
to the far meeting of air and water.
As he dissolved into the great ocean
his limbs twined with those of other creatures
to form compound monsters,
combing the deeps with cloudy fingers.
I heard the waves whisper,
but their message was unclear.
Myriad voices murmured stories
washed white as bone.
I tried to hold him with dream-slow hands,
but the tide pulled him onward.
Adrift, shifting, shape-changing, lost to me.
by Nancy Gandhi