Whenever I think of Cielo
I hear what I couldn’t say
and all the words crashing
into the backs of my teeth,
their wet stoicism of white
clamshells on the seafloor

as if they’d been welded shut
to defend a pearl there. From
far away, I looked joylessly
into her heart, or I tried, to
see behind her shell what I
hoped to be glistening inside
that I couldn’t bring myself
to say I also had.