The Piano, Jane Campion (1993)

This, the ocean’s rustled babble—
was it the first sound the first

woman heard as she was cut
out of another body’s desire,

wet and sand-soaked as a shell
pried out from the shore?

How could it not have been thus—
like now with you, expected one,

shuttered in, inhumed as you are.
Separation is a glass globe in the throat,

the dregs of our old life still wrapped
around our legs, slick as seaweed,

your keys a hidden consecration
of whatever spell we conjure up

together. It does not matter now
if it’s the wait that stokes the thrash

of want, the touch of all touch.
The sky, a fistful of hoarstruck hair.