There are two oceans inside me:
the dark ocean gurgles sometimes,
its bulging coke-can barrels calling to me,
taunting me with their victory
over even teeth built to survive so much.
After the carbonated waves overrunning
pancreas islets: the flats of acid,
the coastal erosion of its chainsaw atoms,
the surface tension of its skin,
its mirage of a face waking up.
It might see me. Its name is retribution.
If you revisit the resort by my ocean of regret,
and the clouds are casting revenge down,
risk it all to harvest the bellyup fishes.
Eat them before they turn.¶
© Tolu Oloruntoba
Note:
This late in the month, even I know I am writing nonsense. I was trying to illustrate the anxiety associated with approaching middle age, and the suspicion that one has not lived as healthily as one needed to. It became garbled with the “there are two wolves” meme, and the coke ocean metaphor from an earlier series of tweets I should really have saved for a poem. Photo by Adrien Olichon from Pexels.