By the lighthouse, my face:
curled shimmer
on the whorl of a shell.
A shell’s cavity, not mine—
its murmur, like weather gathering into your hearing,
not mine, never mine—
a thought of sea followed by the question of land.
*
Shoal end juts out—
a leg severed. Rock wall and water wall.
Prove to me
you are animate:
drive this spade into sand. (Skin, chafing,
reddens—
all the color there is.)
*
In my throat—
salt, salt, salt, and the asking for salt,
till flesh loosens to haze.
Dear one, ghostling, stay close
as we wade into water.
Olga Moskvina was born in a city that used to go by another name, in a country that no longer exists. She holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and is currently working on a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures at Princeton University. Her work has appeared in The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, Plum Tree Tavern, and Gingerbread House.
*Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.
