Unfurled in Three Parts

I

A seal ascends, dives again.
Sea stars cling to sandstone cliffs
as if the tidal zone between ecstasy 

and nothing was the only place worth living.  
These fingers that last night gutted ling cod 
on the lawn, dig deep in risen dough

set aside to rest and rise again. In this world 
that insists on making gods of men 
the dough is not my body 

nor is it the body of Senators Hawley, Graham, or Cruz.
No. This dough belongs only to the bread
I toss in my sack and pedal off to errant shores 

where ribs press hard on pebbled sand, barnacles
grasp at anything left still, and cliffsides drip with vetch
that sing like tiny parrots dressed in drag.

A shiv recovered from my sack lies spent
bread sliced thin, slathered thick with buttered clams
whose sacramental liquors soak my tongue 

as twilight leaves the toe waves glistening
sun dried kelp, the air to reek 
of former rapture. 

II 

I have never hemmed a sail but had I 
my mind would be a stitch gone over twice 
so that nothing comes unraveled

a kelp forest rooted deep, bent 
to the current’s will. No placid sea 
no quiet wind. No. Only the will

to cut the engine. Salt fish, a dry mouth 
past midnight. Yes. I want all my days 
to taste of summer on the Salish Sea,

the air to sparkle with the scent of curing crab, 
to luminesce beneath your feet. Instead, I am 
a diatom’s cracked hull lighting up my face

a channel marker, stiff and staying
a waiting sail whose hemlines fail 
despite their stitching.  

III

Blossoming from a billion years, we tack 
across a crystalline sea, glaciers cracking 
on our bow. Salt collects beneath these nails 

as if I had scratched your eyes out— 
vision red as algal blooms.
Tell me that the ice will feed me 

and I will ask you, How? You say, 
It stops the bleeding. If I were thrown 
upon the shore, I would be glass sanded fine

a clam digging myself in cold. Instead 
I am Greta Thunberg’s hips reciting the rhythm 
of waves, a knife caught in her net that writhes 

with cod, glistens into sunshine. Taking salt 
into my lungs, I wish I were a god. That I could billow 
her sails, send her flying. Instead, I am a mortal 

with a life spent dreaming, whose alveolar sacs 
harden like the breaking sea
hemorrhage in her hull.  

Before you drag me to the depths 
of Nothing Much Worth Saving
let me have a final word: 

Had I the courage of a seal, the pith of bread, the sharpness 
of a shiv, would I have let myself unfurl and lit the world up too?    
So, Greta, dear, sail on! Let me make a god of you.

My only offering, my blood. May it become your ballast. 

EVELYN GILL

Evelyn Gill (she/her or they/them) is a queer gardener, bird-watcher, poet, and psychiatric nurse practitioner who lives in northwest Washington with her spouse and dog. She writes poetry out of need to explore the often-baffling world within and around her. Evelyn’s work is forthcoming in The Indianapolis Review and Vagabond City Literary Journal.