Conch shells

You sound like the ocean
yet escape my hands every time I try
to hold you.
Sometimes it’s not enough to
press conch shells to my ears and listen to your regrets,
to open little glass bottles that you stuffed
skeletons into and sent away with a kiss.
Sometimes it’s not enough to cry at night
and think of all the bodies in the Titanic,
all the lovers who drowned without saying goodbye,
and even though I’ll meet you again someday,
I still miss your perfume and how your bones
fit so nicely next to mine.
Sometimes it’s not enough to pretend that a section
of driftwood would be big enough
for me to sail across the Atlantic to be beside you.
Sometimes it’s not enough to fill my mouth with seawater
and whisper prayers in languages that I don’t understand.
Sometimes it’s really not enough
to sit under a lamp and wish that I had run out of similes
and ways to describe you, because maybe then it
would be easier to forget that I had loved you
so poetically.