Something Brighter than Pity
We learned swans in origami. 
Hours folding and unfolding 
Sternums. We hunted our beach 
For brighter sea hulls. And found
 
A drowned dog. Pale 
Glyph of dog, washed still, unferal. 
 
Like a hearth extinguished. 
We could see the wind 
In its fur and the water 
A fallow field color.
 
The branches we poked 
At its dorsal blade, touching 
 
The curious there of hereafter.
Whose. How did it arrive.  
It was the year we learned 
To swim. We rose every time 
 
To the sun already west of us 
Like a saint leaving a typhus city.
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