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Margarida Vale de Gato
178
Woman Overboard
MAYDAY I cast off, because the war endures
and empty is the vessel from which I departed,
it yields at the bottom swayed by a wave,
sucks at the cleft, a flaw - not merely
a drifting cork-bucket;
I specify: it’s clay and cracks,
and I am sparse in dense fluidity.
Too late it will be, I know, if rescue ever comes:
my signal a small glimmer in the dark;
and water bears no writing
I lie here: barely erasure, hardly
a seam, the wave will slowly sew
quiet cloak over my drowning.