Rooms By The Sea
       

Shadows shift over the ceiling, the walls overlaid
with geometrics of cadmium, ochre, and Prussian blue,

the open door an abrupt fal I onto sand and sea oats.

Lulled by the lap-slap of waves, a woman dozes
in another room. How delicious she remembers
the salt of her lover's flesh.

Out sailing, he maneuvers his boat through swells,
wave over wave collapsing, flotsam driven aground
as the ocean recedes, revealing

no woman, no man, no disarray of clothes
thrown to the floor — nothing,
the rooms deserted as those deep silences

we so often flail around in, unwilling to come about,
fearful of words that might surface
in the restless malaise,

the day sailing off, empty as these rooms by the sea,
only a rapt light basking, serene and at home
everywhere it drifts.

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Copyright © 2020 Julie Suk All rights reserved
from What I Forgot to Say
Jacar Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission