COAX

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These tidings wash me up to your shore. 

I am the bottle and the message 

and the messenger. Who flung

that empty Chardonnay from the east 

to the edges of an unnamed coast.

You rub my spine as I hack up saltwater 

steady in these episodes of nausea as I sway

and rock and tarry in disorientation. 

When I can’t see you hold me till I can.

When I can’t talk you read to me

till I find language tolerable again. 

When I get tired, you let me sleep

and you promise to wake me up. 

Every time I recoil you keep an eye out for me

still seen from astronomical distances. 

You always coax me back home