Emily Brochin

Your father has the blue heart of a sailor adrift for too long,

Has carved the stone bearings and sent them down-current,

And in turn, his children beat red, soft, red. I choose one of them.

I lie alongside your sleeping hands–

you become the rock, the horse-headed post to which I hitch my slumbering shell.

If I were alone in a country of knives,

I would pray on the points.