In the grip of pearl, beauty raced in circles around sand
until the woman’s neck shone, not with diamonds
that reflect, scatter, disperse light but masses that grew
until another body stood in ocean foam and shell.
The water and her blood seemed the same temperature
in time. Isn’t that how the divine goes, pulls you in
until you are some other thing, a tree, a stone, pillar
of salt in a road while the place where you were born
burns down? Why wouldn’t you look? All delayed leaving
as flames spoke like a sea lost in remembering.
Gems clasped her ears, wrists, fingers, throat.