Your voice of wilderness
and ocean waves:
knocking on my island cave,
on black hole in obsidian rock—
your breath: howling
with hurricane urgency.
I clutch my knees
beside a saline puddle
in the cavern,
hoping to wait you out,
praying in the lusterless blackness
the stone at the mouth will hold,
for I sealed out volcanic heat
until no lighted silhouette
of the egress was left.
For centuries
only seaweed stench.
Now your words:
crash of waves chipping
at the boulder blocking light
until a monsoon flashes in—
savage, swirling, suffocating,
too much, can’t breathe, go away—
but lifting me up, dragging me out
to slashing rain and lightning sky
with volcano shrinking into distance,
you whisper this is less depressing
than the chilling emptiness
which had been soaking
my bitter skin.