Swimming in a pool on an island 

surrounded by ocean is like crying over a movie where siblings 

reunite after a parent’s death; 

when really you’re just crying over a movie where siblings 

reunite after a parent’s death. 

Blame the soundtrack, unbottling what’s urn’d like a child-proof

cap, a shallow wound. But in my story

I was drowning. In my story, he doesn’t save or ruin me. 

I swallowed panic. I drowned things

like bodies inside me, downed rain.hip first.broken in half 

in a tube.no hands.the last & first 

to come out of the womb, a softly stretched shirt.

I grew up & over flooded someone else’s ocean

instead of diving in, lying at the bottom, lying to parents, plot-caked 

tile marked. They bear the sun & shame—

increasing alertness.alarm.whirlpooling. There was no one left

to save me, save my brother. How evenly flat 

you & red dirt stained others. You can never construct carnations: 

a funeral cart, white. The end of a map. 

Other animals have alternate self-protection methods.

Seconds before a wooden bowl hits the tile,

I know exactly where it will crack, like how I can spot a savior 

when cold-blooded animals change colors 

too swiftly—edged down, jeans spread. There are times when 

I’ve said no to pie.to acid.to boys 

who didn’t know what they wanted: to camouflage themselves. 

I wonder if I’m the broken part 

in the wooden bowl, like a pool in the middle the ocean,

holding my pieces together, 

& I’d cry like crying over a movie about  

Shareen K. Murayama (she/her) is a Japanese-Okinawan American poet and educator who lives in Honolulu, Hawai`i. She spends her afternoons surfing and her evenings with her dog named Squid. She’s a reader for The Adroit Journal, a Featured Poet at Negative Capability Press, and her art is forthcoming in Puerto Del Sol, Bamboo Ridge, & Agapanthus Collective. You can find her on Instagram & Twitter @ambusypoeming.