- as she grew older she was sure
- she could see islands emerging under her skin.
- they began as faint discolorations,
- discrete dots that quickly connected into archipelagos,
- chains of chiseled growth
- others thought were freckles, or bruises.
- what could she make of this?
- she had not intended her body
- to become a world,
- a sanctuary for islands, not all of them tropical,
- a few, close to her temples, frosted and hoary.
- the speed this creating took alarmed her.
- once it had gained her as a mainstay
- she was fixed in a swirl of mysterious activity,
- a manifesto of determinism,
- a refuge for flotsam and jetsam,
- wayward sailors, and lost albatross.
- “treasures are sure to be buried deep inside me,” she thought,
- “covered over by sand from my many years of sleep.”
- surely this is a miracle,
- the sign for which she had waited,
- her entire life one compiling flotilla,
- never reaching the horizon.