Shoals

I roll and twine miniature scrolls,
feed them into bottles bound for the sea,
stoppering messages watertight–

names, ages, colours of their eyes;
crayoned self-portraits, the small secrets
that make them laugh, roar, cry.

How Molly told me before sleep
that geckos never need to blink.
The house dreams of shoals

shifting direction, translucent walls of fish
glimmering aquamarine, vermillion.
Nightlights turn in windows like warnings for rocks.

I fling the bottles like meagre catch
beyond the boat’s lapping halo–
buoying prayers of the backdrop moon.

Withstanding fathoms, horizons, the bottles
will finally breach, nose into alien sand
like nothing the sea should ever spit out.

Published in Boyne Berries