“And more I have told no one”

I learned from my father how to keep secrets,
how the water came
in, the water covered us
for a moment in the form
of the tide. Coming in, he asked,
“Can you say more?”
We were wet from the waist down, clothes
tighter than skin, foam on my hair.

And weeks later I am glad
to have no plans, just a house filling with stillness,
with an evening when it has started
to rain – the dripping persimmon tree, crickets
chirruping under grey sky fading to night. Where
eyes lose colour, slowly turning glass
over in the sand, in the room where I met him
I lit a fire – all our conversations burned
easily as paper, right through the fabric
of the couch, through the memory of our clothing.

To no one I have told everything, deciding
often to let words be, to let
the creaking floorboard, the dry leaves scattering
across the road, the bright shock of waves to speak
instead, deafening the question
– say more – lets all the silence out.