By Polly Conway

The dog pretended he was ours, so we were people

with a white dog looking at the water. The dog stood between us.

(This moment is mixed-genre.) It’s a conversation

between an open and a closed anemone.

I dreamed my mother miscarried, and we dredged

through handfuls of sea foam, membranous spirals for the

embryo on the bathroom countertop. Searching for one tadpole egg

in algae. That’s a little taste of freshwater, baby. Now back to the ocean.

I want you to understand the give

of rocks covered with anemones in a tide pool. Each is

studded with rubble. They pilfer pebbles to transform, reflect light.

Real rocks claimed by false rocks who shield their own softness.

In our dream, we are otters cracking shells with the right

rocks on our plush bellies. I touch

the dog’s short hair. In a tide pool, a starfish

has eighteen arms. Eighteen. That’s gotta be a record.

It’s not. Did you know

that sunflower sea stars can keep growing

arms if they want to, up to twenty-four from their round

center. They will it, as I will myself.

In the water’s dream, tunicates invade.

Botrylloides violaceus, a neon-orange colony of zooids that drapes

itself over a rocky substrate. Botrylloides diegensis, a destructive diegesis

in this cinema verité. Babe, I’m your unreliable narrator of tides.

They wash everyone away, every day, twice

on my semi-diurnal stomping ground.

Yet every little creature remains. I know, I know, I keep

perseverating on this theme but I can’t stop. A grain of sand and all that.

Picture me in slack water, a moment without movement.

Did you know the tides can stop? I’ll be waiting, invisible.

Taking shelter in a ghost shrimp tunnel. Taking

something from nothing until it all starts up again.

In my dream, there is no dog, or anything, but the flesh

of the starfish makes you hungry, you said. In your dream,

you touch the dog’s hair and it’s less bristly than you

expected. In the dog’s dream, I get licked clean.