KRISTINE UYEDA

Penelope Instructs Her Husband
on the Nature of the Sea

I am not a sailor, Odysseus,
and what I know of the sea,
if folded in half, could live
in your palm like a splinter:
beyond the harbor, the sea
is vast and delicious and
my name echoes beneath
the wavecrest like birdsong.
A heart’s dull thrum, in time,
loosens the shipbuilder’s
surest union. A gull’s call
awaits no answer. Silence
is refused even in moonlight.
And to be carried over
will not be enough—
to be delivered whole we must
first survive ourselves.