After the winter: the park in spring. You buy a kite shaped like a dragon,
say, fly, dragon, fly,

but the wind does not carry it away. You must make
a memory. Take a memory. A memory of black sharpies and a dripping nose. It is cold, perhaps
an aftermath of Demeter's loss, (perhaps

she still cries even when that girl is there.)

On back of the dragon's wings you write, That girl does not love me, something in herself
loves her own fickle fingers, her own birthplace,
her own marrows.

You remember photographs of her, her songs, (soft as the cradled babe,
but you do not carry me, you will not,) but she still wants to carry bruises
forehead to forehead

tongue to tongue.

In the background: a different kind of love. In your hands: ones that move away.

When it is all done, it sinks into the ocean. A slow flight, a dim light. You fly the kite into the gone:
it does not unpack into stay. You snap the string, of course you do, you've planned this, and you let it fall

into the trees, watch it drown, watch it go.

Here are all my seas, you say, nine thousand five hundred seventy nine point five miles
gone down to the soft bed, here it ends up held up by oaks

and makeshift soil.