We come to sea from air to feast,
to sink and stub all prepositions.
Thhoo. We come to sea for soliloquy.
Thhoo. One speaker, one water, one love.
Thhoo. Blood makes its own demands:
heat, flow, clot, and the need
to conquer numbers. Thhoo.

To look at the sea—to believe in it—
is to know that there is nothing beyond it.
Thhoo. We come to sea to spit,
to hiss without reserve,
to become ululation. Thhoo.
Here, in the sea, is our spit’s
final destination. Thhoo.

We come to sea to drown witches,
those oversexed beasts
that live in our winter clocks:
boredom, impatience, deadlines.
Thhoo. To look at the waves is to discover
how the sea serves tirelessness,
the ancient god of love. Thhoo.
For only love is more tireless than the sea.

Like an infant playing with its legs,
the sea entertains itself. Its rest
is always the sand. There the thhoo.
We come to sea to stop being man.
For only humans spit after a feast. Thhoo.

We come to sea to be assured
that our spit will reach the other.
Thhoo. We come to sea to encounter
what we have feared most:
the privacy of spit in our marriage.
Thhoo. Here our feet can touch,
as the roots of our lives do,
without the entanglement of mouths.
Thhoo. Our hands, our leaves, our nails
remain, eager with penitence,
but scared to touch. Thhoo.

And then, as sea-sand soaks spit,
and our tongues tire of feasts,
we preserve histories like dentures.
The mouth’s vengeance in a jar: Thhoo.