In time this pebble, gathered from that beach
which cuddles the curves of your body, would

have dissolved to sand. But I have gathered it,
made of it an obelisk to my need for permanence,

the way I take things I love and tattoo them to
my body: on my right shoulder, Lady Liberty

cradling a refugee; on my left, daffodils
in front of a sunset we might watch, together,

drain from red to pink to black. I wonder: if
we could pluck a star from the sky, place it

on our nightstand, would it be freed from
a star’s fate? I finger the pebble’s curves,

touch its surface to my tongue. If I had my
way, I suppose there would be no shorelines,

no dying light sinking into bruised-blue lakes, no
dead poets, no Libraries of Alexandria. But when

I kiss these waters, an electric charge enters me
like an eel and I don’t mind that I’m drowning.