Graham always brings smoked salmon to the Saturday ocean dip at Crown Beach. We eat it like animals, grabbing fat slices off the golden paper slab with our fingers and ribboning it into our mouths. Meet me in murky water, legs slapped with stringy eelgrass, messy viridine strands, clingy yellow egg sacs perfect in their geometry. Japanese bubble snails, spongy squeezable sea potatoes, red spaghetti kelp; the whole gang is there, exposed or hidden. Think I can only talk about the ocean? I get it. But I’m haunted by CPAP dreams that never climax, sweaty palms, swallowed spiders, a missing flower shop cat named Number Five. My own perfect beast pretends to eat plants for attention, smacking her lips while posing demurely next to a plastic polka-dot begonia. We all hope no one will see through our little ruses. I used to think I became invisible when I closed my eyes. Now I’m invisible without even trying. That’s okay. You can float in the shallowest water, and I do, my bare back caressed by slippy, sacred filaments. Just gotta let it happen. Live through it over and over until you can let the water’s hands touch you without flinching.
Polly is a writer and editor based in Alameda, CA. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in One Art, Wildscape Literary Journal, MEMEZINE, Pictura, Catamaran Literary Reader, and others. She is the Poetry Editor at Nulla, a multimedia journal based in San Francisco, and completed a residency at Ou Gallery on Vancouver Island in 2026. Polly holds an MFA in Poetry from California College of the Arts.