I.
Stiff in early morning the floorboards curse
beneath me, my bones crack like glass, drag behind me
like anchors. I shuffle to the sink;
I yawn warm-stink & I want
to shatter each and every
sauce-stuck wet-mush dinner-platter:
residues of my ravenous.
My hunger permeates.

II.
At the wishing-well I plead to be satiated, filled with grace–
then I swallow the whole lot of dreams.

III.
I think tons                           about tons
        about the act of         sinking.

How dreams weigh you down.

About large, and beautiful, ships greening
with moss in the dark, shiny bodies swimming in & out
of bodies.

About dreams way down.

IV.
I wonder at the bulging debt of my gut. I abase the
full-moon shape; soft-
ness of my jaw. I dream it cuts like glass.
In the ceramic blue wash-basin swims
my sharpened willingness to diminish,
like a circle longing after an oval.
  What an odd desire: to pare myself down
with my silver like a sculpture,
carve myself to a spire.             Something nice to sea:
the thin line of horizon.       Sinking, I see
my crystal whiskey glasses,
the dainty crescent lips of the decanter.
How long before the sediment
of my rancor settles? Before I am acceptable
                                                             & digestible?

V.
With my mutilated fingers
in the foam water washing I wonder how long before
these small knives smooth over, turn to sea-glass, pennies
swollen with the ocean’s blue-green.
O, to be buoyant, foam sliced from wave;
the difference between
solid, & gas. I wish on every used-up penny
I could float, on air, or through life,
like a small beautiful thing.
O, how I wish this were an ode
            to the weight of the whole ocean.
            Instead, I know that
at the bottom of the ocean          you weigh one-third less.

Camille Ferguson lives in and loves Cleveland, Ohio. Camille recently graduated from Cleveland State University where she received the Neal Chandler Creative Writing Enhancement Award. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Ligeia Magazine, Rabid Oak, Madcap Review, Drunk Monkeys, and Memoir Mixtapes, among others.