The ocean swells under her windowsill / its waters lick at the house’s seams &

squeeze / through the gap under the front door / rain kamikazes down from the skies /

like a father’s fists might. / Waterlogged books grow thicker by the day / knickknacks

drift about like flotsam / spiders sail on the paper boats she’s made for them / their

webs a beadwork of seawater / her eyelashes crusting over with tacky salt. / Her bed

submerged for days now / she sleeps atop her desk where she pens daytime

prophecies / soggy pages hugged close to a slumbering chest / ink streaks like pillow

creases across her cheeks. / She catches fish with paper clips / drinks rainwater out of

tin cans / never once looking up from her life’s work. / Gone, the memory of being

dry / of being safe / cosmic clairvoyance for human fallacies / the world the world the

world—

Prophesy no 1: the oil will taste like righteous poison

Prophesy no 6: the tar will choke two-headed fish

Prophesy no 18: when the earth cries so will we

Prophesy no 23: our little blue marble will keep growing bluer than a stillborn

And on the fortieth day / the seaside prophet will complete her manuscript / folded

reverently inside a glass bottle & sealed with a cork / released out her window into

the oil-slicked sea. / She will gather her books into a raft / the house spiders climbing

aboard their newest paper boat / girl and spiders eager to go where the sea takes them

/ to pay their penance.

© 2025 Avra Margariti