Tell me where you hide your seal skin;
what you said to me in the black net and 
wrapping these bodies in nori 

i've been trying to find where
you keep your seal skin--
it's not
behind the scarves in the closet
or beneath the doormat like
the house key--
i want you to know
you can stop hiding from me 
i want to go back
to the ocean too--
we're only putting off the inevitable
pretending to be humans--
drinking glass after glass
of viscus air--
we are people who swim even as thin 
as breath but i know
that we can't wait forever--
sometimes 
i have seen you hold
your hands too long under
a warm faucet
you're imagining
that we're under a waterfall
only this time i'm a river
dolphin and you're the hooks--
i have known 
you in all the lives of the sea-- 
shimmer skin--
jostled 
in a vein of tuna--
a throbbing kelp forest-- 
flicker in the tangled arms of
sand roses--
was it you who died next
to me in the black knots of a net--
called me sister-- called me 
cephalopod-- told me
you wished to be born again as
a giant squid so you could swallow ships
and make the waves--
instead we were born 
alien to the air-- a whole body 
engulfed with thirst--
lay here with me
packaged in dry skin
like nori-- hold me
in soft sticky rice-- 
did they make our tails into sushi
so we could have these unsteady legs?  
these days i see
the jellyfish bloom in medusas 
when we flip pancakes-- 
i mistake the windows
for another tank-- punch a whole
in the hopes of a rush of water--
another wait to be dressed in wasabi
i'm telling you
we were chop stick muses--
swam into soy sauce--
now darling where do you keep 
your seal skin? 
i can't have you leaving without me--
devoured by the drain in the shower--
take the house key with you if you
go-- i don't want to remember
sleeping again in rice--
it reminds me too much of a black net
of a door bell--
kiss me like a the medusas of the jellyfish--
a bouquet of bioluminescence--
sweet scales of ginger-- 
now tell me where you keep your seal skin?
i'm coming with you and find
a sea rose to put in your hair--
we'll make offerings for the giant
squid-- and he'll teach us 
how to make a wave-- hold 
us tight as sticky rice--
use your skin as a doormat.