loose lips sink ships,
so do holes,
and bombs.
and poorly contrived rhymes.
and occasionally, icebergs.
how did the iceberg feel? the people screaming and burning and drowning, but a steely stern rammed that iceberg in the night, boat-rape.
a sleeping iceberg, crushed. soft pink people, like baby mice or a yawning clam or pomegranate seeds, plummeting into the sea, reeled into rubber boats, survivors casting and pulling them up out of the water like glistening, chocking fish an a line, like my father's preaching shoes, lifted out of the pile by the laces, by the gypsies.
hanging on a string, a hook, a preserver, stolen from death. stolen from heaven, stolen from hell.
the gypsies stole me from my cradle. they stole my father's shoes, the bits of the boat, my friend's grandmother's taxi cab, and me.
from whom did they steal us? the devil? the sea? macedonia?
loose lips sink ships.
rolling stones gather no moss.
naked, twirling stones.
i threw a stone at a little boy once, just to scare him, but it bounced up from the ground and hit his knee. his mom shrieked at me and all the other kids noticed my knees, knobbly, purple, covered in bumps. why are your knees like that, they asked. i gathered no moss. we moved to the aftermath of a genocide.
