JENNY WONG

The Wooden Rental Canoe

&

Low Tide On Shell Beach

The Wooden Rental Canoe

When I push your buoyant frame into the water, I feel all my bones align, dig for connection within the crunch of loose gravel and sloping shore, remember that the sound for home 

is not the same as my ancestors. 

Your bow curves smooth as my palm explores the pieces of you that were taken and 

bleached, 

carved, 

shape-stained 

into something deemed useful, named in a language meant to be spoken.

Do you still think of yourself

as tree?

Do you wonder 

if you could ever go home? 

And when the sea takes over, the burden of our bodies becomes weightless in her grasp, nudged into fathoms, lost in liquid lengths, yet we still long to see that safe cover of forest and that curved lip of land.

And when we return to shore, will we only be recognized 

as shells, hollowed things

unable to be whole,

unable to grow 

roots.

Low Tide on Shell Beach 

past lives, rinsed out 

crevices / calcium husks / seal bone smooth / salt weary edges 

seeking refuge onshore, away from the roughness of warring water.

my friend finds a piece of sea glass, notes how it still shines,

throws it back and says, it's not ready yet.