On Cryptozoology
Even in the silvery light, it doesn’t come back to me
and I can’t quite make it out. Like the overcast day
when I swam out alone, then started laughing: the cold
won’t stop. By the end, it was almost a relief.
With my hair wet, he said, I might be some watery cryptid
dragging him down, drowning him deep. He didn’t ask
much else of me. Now when I sleep I don’t see
the tangles of rotting kelp, those green ripples
at our feet. Should I say that he loved me
for my selfishness, or the freckle on my cheek?
I only dream the whining gulls, the cormorants
and me. Not the stranger with his mouth who walked the beach
laughing. Or years before, the salt scratching my heart
when I stretched out alone in the echoing green.
*
Kaily Dorfman was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California, and completed her MFA in poetry at UC Irvine and her PhD in English and literary arts at the University of Denver. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Best New Poets anthology, and is published or forthcoming at journals including New England Review, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, The New Criterion, and Summerset Review.
