The Crossed-Out Ballast Names

she confused my love for the cobwebs
and 4,500 children drank the diseased water
coming out of the stones, the mouths, the weeping sores

she is / was
like yesterday
every exit, an exhale, a pardon, a surrender; fatigue

i am stiff, wooden, rigor mortis
i, the icon on a sinking ship
worshiped by drowned men who learned how to breathe
ten seconds too late.