In our memories, the moon was old
and full when we started
and now lies unripe,
deflated in the sky.
There, time is still a friend.

(Then why do we feel the noose-shaped
city tighten around us by the hour?)

The unmarried hand
throws its ring into the bay.
A seal notices in the dark
with a predator’s eyes
but passes without comment.
Weeks later, daytime swimmers
don’t realize that her bared teeth
are angrier for the unseen glint,
or that their fear and the seal’s fear
are also the silver’s fear
and the hand’s fear.
It glows there in the trash
and the weeds.
It still glows there, always a little bit
not at rest.

The hand grasps the arm, drowning,
reshaping fat and muscle (though
not much of that) over bone.
Who is this watery woman, this
rosy home-wrecker at dawn?
Who calls this lovely?
Who hands out the power to wreck?