[The ship] is slowly giving up her sentient life.
I cannot write about it.
                                       — Shackleton, diary

Next to where their ship went down
they pitched their linen tents.

You, mountain-climbing,
mountain-climbing,
wearing your dead father’s flight jacket—

My scalp is alive,
love touched it. My eyes are open water.
Yours too.

Sitting in the dark Baltimore bar
drinking coke
with you with your inoperable cancer
with your meds

no tent
no care what we look like
what we say

Later that night, in my room
looking into the mirror, to tell the truth
I looked right through into nothing.
I was loved.