alyssa froehling / poem
- coatofbirdseditors
- Jul 11, 2024
- 1 min read
Scopeaesthesia
Tell me what I want. I can’t answer anyone.
My mouth is a door battered shut by the tide. I want
every grain of sand boring into me like the jeweled eyes
of God. My mouth is still, a boarded-up window
filled with mold. God is always watching me. While I change
into my bikini, while I lose rows and rows of my teeth.
They drop onto the shore, blending in with bits
of shell. At dawn they turn into tiger’s eye, a cantrip
I hide in my palm. A secret place where I can stand
in a whale’s line of sight and remain unseen.
I stand in a whale’s eye. I am there when the sky turns
red. The sun drops into my palm, then I remember
the summer I drove from the Midwest to the Atlantic
Ocean to be stared at by eyes red and angry with salt.
If I wasn’t trying to be seen, then why else would I be here?
Alyssa Froehling's poems appear in Nashville Review, Puerto Del Sol, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Find her at alyssummaritimum.com.
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