Dominik Parisien

Watch For That Horizon

For Alfred Joanisse

You gave us pebbles from the seashore, driftwood green and brown.

We peeled the flesh from our fingers, broke the bones off at the knuckles, set your stones in one by one
carved driftwood gloves to hold them together.

We carry the weight of salt in our hands. Our fingers ache for warm shores.

We kissed your forehead goodbye. The skin like a plastic water bottle.

You drifted out to sea
on a raft of our bones.

Dominik Parisien lives in French, writes in English and dreams in a combination of the two. He is an intern for Cheeky Frawg Books and a former editorial assistant for Weird Tales. His fiction has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and his poetry in Stone Telling.