Saltwater Poetry

Sometimes I wonder what soap tastes like.

And not in the way that a little bit gets in your mouth when you wash your face or the way your mother might have shoved a bar of the stuff in your mouth when you said something you shouldn’t have, but what it really tastes like. If you were to put a bottle to your mouth and gulp it down, you know?

I don’t know. That’s not even what I really wonder about. Not now, at least. And yet, it feels closer to the truth than any attempt I could ever make to describe what I’m feeling.

I promised her a poem. What I really owed her was an apology. Ultimately, I gave her neither.

I did write her a poem. It’s in my hands now, crumpled up and flattened back out several times over. The words are jagged and ugly, the product of a quivering hand and a fractured page. I never claimed to have particularly beautiful penmanship anyway, but there is something about these letters that makes them worse than unimpressive. Rather, they are terrifying, bursting with anger when I can only recall sorrow.

I give a misshapen “o” two eyes and a mouth. Mentally, of course, so as to maintain the integrity of the unsent poem. Still, I swear I see the damaged letter grin and leap off the page. I even feel a slight sting on my cheek, the poem’s first attack.

My heart sinks into my stomach under the pressure of my mind and I reach for a glass of water. Each gulp tastes like the soap I previously could not seem to fathom, and so I start to wonder what she tasted like. It’s there, on the tip of my tongue, dancing slowly, a tickling tease.

The poem says it is wood, but that doesn’t make much sense. Wood doesn’t taste particularly good. Besides, I am wood, stiff and dry. Perhaps she is wool? Warm.

I don’t recall her tasting particularly good— what person does? —but I am still surprised I’d compare her flavor to a material I surely have never tasted.

I crush the paper in my hand, my palm bleeding on the sharp edges of what was once a piece of paper. I squeeze it as tight as I can, like I once did with her hand.

That was affection; this is frustration.

The best and worst part about people is that they really aren’t people at all. They’re toys, like the ones I had growing up. I once lost an Incredible Hulk action figure— I still suspect it was stolen— and cried about it for weeks on end. When my mother eventually replaced it, that wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t my Incredible Hulk action figure. But then it was.

The rise and the fall.

That’s how the poem ends. Pretty terrible writing on my part. I forgot so much. There’s the rise and there’s the fall but in between there is that same pattern repeating itself over and over and over again.

Really, it’s about waves, that line.

A return to the scene of the crime, where paper’s spiked edges turn soggy and smooth, where I left her high, but certainly not dry.

The water had always scared me. I should have told her that. But I was her rock, unflinching, stiff like wood. She was allowed to fear and to feel, and it was my job to tell her it will all be okay.

But with every rise and every fall that ocean wrapped its hands around my neck and squeezed tighter and tighter. This was no affection, no frustration. This was termination. It was over for me, and my heart leaped into my skull too quickly for my mind to fight back.

One more rise, one more fall, never to rise again.

The blood running down my arm vanishes, and the crumpled up poem soon follows. Then, so do I.

Everything tastes like soap, even the saltwater still working its way through my lungs.

I promised her a poem. I owed her an apology. I gave her neither.

Instead, I am a liar, but that is only because it is impossible to tell the truth. The pit in my stomach is gone. Now, it’s in my throat. Is it in yours?