Attraversamento

I arrived at the port sought through blood
as a grail—not a place after all, but the hands

that led me to it—where departure lay stationed
upon a track of hours ahead, where we hid

in an ancient fort crumbling toward soft waves
and stepped out dripping dark sea. I guarded my tongue

like an open wound, refused to walk through
another’s door to reach what I needed to find.

In sleep, our bodies went unmentioned, unremarkable
as Vesuvius smoking beyond vineyards

under a blush of moon. This is how tomorrow
can take hundreds of years to happen—

golden mist lit outside, sun burning at the edges
of all things like a crust of salt. Do not say

I have not atoned for what I did not claim. I crossed
alone, shrouded in mud. I held my hands in surrender.