Precarious - Lucia Larsen

precarious

silence

swells its accommodation

a dry tongue retreats

leviathan of the deep

burned by the sun

a row of molars withdraws

the last squad standing

pried apart by spears

dam newly constructed

soon bursts into

precarious

voice

dam dam dam

drowning

dam dam dam

out

dam dam dam

all

dam dam dam

my

precarious

thoughts

persistent

in the shallows and the shoals

no vantage free of the

washed up milk jugs and grocery bags

no surface quiet over the

vents relentlessly bubbling up with CO 2

no way to sift out all the

microplastics lingering in the sand

muddying up all my

precarious

truths

a tide tug-tug-tugs on a castle

saturated to the

boiling point of significance

it evaporates

a moon tug-tug-tugs on a linchpin

collapsing any memory of substance

from the meaning I built

out of water

Bio:

Lucia Larsen is from Chicago and is currently studying for her Masters in Environmental Management at the University of Stirling in Scotland. Her work has appeared in The Unpublishable Zine.