As If from the Sea 

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BY  C. DAL E YOUN G
Because this is a dream, the beach is completely
empty, and not a single person can be seen
swimming in the bay. And so, I swim as God intended,
au natural, naked or, as we said when we were kids,
nekkid. This nekkidness is the one aspect that happens
in dream as well as in waking life, but that is, well,
irrelevant. This isn’t a poem about me swimming
nekkid. I mean, let’s be real, I have some standards.
But the sea is calm, almost like a lake, and the water
is so clear it is easy to make out small fish darting
in little clusters nearby. The whole thing is so
goddamned peaceful and blissy. But then a man
almost as brown as I am, with a fairly neat mustache,
rises as if he is the man from Atlantis, rises as if
he had been swimming underwater for like a month,
rises and exhales with all the drama of a drag queen.
Okay, that may be pushing it a bit too far, but he
stands and breathes heavily for almost ten minutes before
swimming over to me. He says: “You know why I am here.”
But I honestly have no idea. This may be my dream,
but I am never in control in my dreams. When I say never,
I really mean never. Soon, we are kissing, our naked bodies
touching. We are completely inappropriate, but this
isn’t about impropriety, nor is it about sex. But we have sex.
And while I am inside him, while we are kissing
and his arms are around my neck, it begins. Our hands
begin twisting together and, without warning, our chests
merge. We twist and fuse and then the dark bark
begins rising from our skin, now one, one body, and
one skin now covered in bark. And this is awesome
in the old-school sense of the word, you know, as
in awe-inspiring, filled with awe. And lo and behold,
we are a single tree standing in the shallows, our feet
now rooted in the sand as the leaves begin erupting
from our branches. That two men having sex
become a tree standing in the sea might seem odd,
but I read a lot of Ovid as a child. And well, it
affected me quite deeply. I’m just trying to be
honest here. I mean, I feel I owe you that.
But when I wake, I am covered in sweat, my heart
racing and panicked. I lie there feeling the motion
of the sea within me, my skin prickling, my skin
softened and salty as if from the sea.