The Ocean Remembers Everything
-for Hayley

No pink roses or stuffed toys,
no pale baby’s breath
or smiling visitors,
the dusty shades are drawn.

Imaginary lace dresses hung
in phantom closets.
First communion, prom,
bridesmaid, wedding.
Spectral flowers in dry bouquets.

The high tide lashes the sea wall.
Steel halyards sing your name,
tiny bells on their masts.
Wooden ships pitch in the churning sea
under a bright blood moon.

My illusory green-eyed girl,
a brief sweet dream
adrift, floating leeward.

© Susan Cossette

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).

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