Nommo in September

There you exist in water.
Unending sketch and erase

of waves on the sea surface.
Today, you’ll be all the words

I wanted to say: look, they’re so
pretty in that second they

surface. You almost didn’t
see them. You didn’t see them.

Sinuous, so commitment’s
a strange shape to hold and take.

I loved the water of you, the snake of
you, everything amorphous and short-lived,

as I expected nothing to last of us.
But when the waves break I still call them by name.