I tell myself I’ll write a sestina and then be done—
keep it clean, controlled, a little deep
but not too much. I choose a bench of warm concrete
by the shore. My phone is at home. Blue
crushed cans float in the shallows like liferafts. You are gone,
or at least elsewhere. I refuse to say moon.

Too sentimental. Too easy. But the moon
keeps nudging in, low and stupid. I said I was done
with all that—metaphor, yearning, the soft kind of gone
that smells like summer heat. I want deep
to mean clever, not honest. I want blue
to mean the lake, not your body on the concrete.

But I said it first, on that patch of crumbling concrete—
"This isn’t real, right?" And then the moon
rose anyway. And the water turned the wrong kind of blue.
Still, I insist on finishing the form. A sestina gets done
eventually, even if it’s a scream underwater. Even if the deep
end starts laughing. Even if you're gone

before the line breaks. Because yes, you’re gone—
but not enough. Not in the concrete
way I need, down with the milfoil and the old growth in the deep.
Still, I wanted to outwrite the moon.
I wanted to make any of this make sense, point and finally be done.
But every line turns back to blue.

Blue flippers. Blue fins. Blue skin. Blue bodies. Blue
sky peeking through a chemtrail web. Walls of blue texts. Gone
is just a color now. And I’m not done.
I keep scribbling on this hot concrete
like it’s a prayer. Like the moon
might take pity. I say deep

but mean help. I say deep
and mean please. I say blue
and mean I can’t stop hanging the moon
over your odious head. I say gone
but want it undone. This concrete
language isn’t working. I’m not done.

I meant to be done, dump it all off the edge and be fine. But the waves
keep dragging their blue hem across my form, cracked open on the concrete.
I wanted a poem and got your myth instead. And still—the moon. The moon.

© 2026 Sarah Chin