The word Pacific always felt made up,
and you always hated it anyway. Water
was never peaceful and what was the use
of a brine you could not drink, of a word
that could not happen? You are tired of harshness,
though you’ve heard ocean quenches other things.
So say the ones who have felt it, who have been
pilgrims through the deep trenches of the planet
to find what body was lost.

When you get there, it looks like every
mirage you’ve ever seen, but you take your
clothes off anyway. That’s what they told you to do.
Even the part of you that is machine, they told you,
and as you unwire the piece of you that is no longer a
phantom, you realize you are still electric and you
wonder when the metal part of you became flesh,
and think that this is how it feels to be naked, and that
maybe it is not strength that you have never felt this way.

Giving the ocean your feet—you feel you are entering
a body. They told you this water was once global, not this
secret canyon that you’ve searched for, this gash open to
the core, a vein, a throat. You are chest deep when it claims
you, when it laps against your heartbeat, cold and warm
together. You didn’t know it would swallow you whole.
The salt drops on your skin match the pearls that fall from your eyes
only these are a gift, not the taking by grief of water from your body.

It quenches other things, this monster.

You have fought for so long that you can recognize the warrior
in water. No part of it is soft but it is not harsh. You are powerless,
enveloped and entered. You are sinking and you are bodiless.
Mother I’m home, you think, and you are suddenly not sorry for your
seeking of life in a wasteland. They told you that in legend the ocean
 was a woman spilled and powerful and you can tell this is so by the
way she moves in embrace around you, the way she breathes, and you
close your eyes and in this way you learn to breathe again. It is quiet
and you realize that you are no longer fighting for 

   every   single   breath.

Originally from Albuquerque, NM, Kristian Macaron received her MFA from Emerson College in Boston, MA and thus melded her love for the colorful Southwest with the stunning New England coast. She likes to write about volcanoes, pirates and time travel and is an editor of the literary journal, Manzano Mountain Review. Kristian’s poetry chapbook, Storm, is published by Swimming With Elephants Publications and her other publications of fiction and poetry can be viewed on her website: Kristianmacaron.com