Dear Stranger,

I very much enjoy a complete unknown.
To cast a net into the vast ‘everything is possible’
and come back caterwauling or else enchanted;

I swim in murky waters,
walk deer trails during new moons
when one can’t even see the smallest
fingertip at arm’s length.

You are a moon that needs a telescope,
these letters are lenses we twist
and if I see your glowing surface,
you also see the eye of my blue
peeping at you in wonder.

Who are you?
Has anyone ever asked?
What are your phases?

There’s something to a dark side never seen,
a promise of an edge once stepped over,
the moving of a hand through the surface
of still water, a darkened foot,
a detached hand.

A fish gasping in the air,
pulled from a child’s hands
and fileted by a grandmother.

What’s within is its own unknown.
The wet and dark interior
of its own infinity of stars,
electric with memory,
chance and even hope.

Hope is its own terror,
the eggs of the shark
spilling on the butcher’s block,
a leech between your toes,
a cave-in after you’ve passed
the deepest cavern
and become trapped
with dark water, lightless,
cold,
or maybe with a full moon,
a song, a soft bed
and a shoulder to rest your head on.

submit to soboghoso.