this is how I will end:

stripped bare, washed
to the bone; ransacked by memory,
or lack thereof –

too many years of pretending
this shell is empty. no red marrow
to disrupt these concave walls. hollow and
bleached white on the shore: yes,
I echo. the wind whistles through me.

I would have been a skeleton. flesh
is excess: look, I would have been bone.

a dry wind whipped the words from my mouth. I was clean
and unspoken – for a long time, I was silent.

this white shard
is impervious to the sea. no torrent of salt
shall corrode me, no such soft-scent rain
to weather this unbroken oyster.

thoughts pearlize and
precipitate – no longer pure liquid. look,
I would have died unblemished, gone to dust
a flawless whole. one grain of sand
defeats this hope.

this will be my end:

until the sun rose, and
following, like a ship, like a herald, the day.