How else to explain your voice like an ocean inside me, desire spilling over a
porous shore? Maybe I’m Aeneas playing out the same impossible choice. I sail
for Italy not of my own free will. Maybe the night is the silent sea we sail through
and dreams the dark circle of birds we become. No beginning and no end. Only
tacking across the thin surface of this life until there is nothing left to mourn but
stars pressed into the semblance of sky, until we abandon even the most distant
figures on the horizon, until the water is enough.
Peter Grandbois is the author of seven previous books. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in over sixty journals. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is senior editor at Boulevard magazine and teaches at Denison University in Ohio.