Dogtooth, Norway

I wake up without my dreams and walk to where the tide
has murdered the shore

as it will now every morning and every morning after that.

It’s naked and silent and bright

and there’s no signal here, but I still carry the small fist
of my phone in my pocket.

The stench of the weed is syrupy and the sand is covered in
rocks the size of babies

chipped over lifetimes from the hills that stare over my shoulder.

Nested between two of them, I find a dog’s bottom jaw.

All of the teeth are still fitted into their sockets, except one
which has been lost

and left a hole like those in school recorders—
the gap where the whistle ekes through.

At least I think it belonged to a dog, or was a dog, or was part of

a dog. Because it doesn’t bear thinking that it was part
of something else

that I can’t name, that chewed beneath the water.

We arrived on the island after dark.
It was the light in the windows that scared us.

All over the world, women patching quilts for their children
have left a trail of deliberate errors

as tributes to God—a dutiful acknowledgement

of their own failure to be whole.
Not to do so would be a dangerous invitation.

I don’t lift the bone from the ground. I don’t even touch it.

I just take a picture to send to everyone I hope will find me,
when the time comes.

A whole morning will pass before I open my mouth.

You are still asleep when I get back to the van

so full of salt I could choke you without even taking a breath.