The Boat I’m Building You

By Robin Cedar

Issue 35 • Spring 2017 • Poetry

Questions I haven’t asked
pearl in my mouth –
what happens when you must sail

towards that horizon,
what happens when
I have to let you go?

I will wade out to guide you
because that is what a daughter
is meant to do, but every horizon

looks flat from this distance.
The closer we get to that line
the more the revolving blue roils.

As I guide your boat, the water
will rise until there is nothing of me
above the water.

In this way, I will be more
intimate with death
than ever before.

It will feel like belonging,
bobbing like that –
as if I’ve convinced you to let me

come with you.
But you have asked this task of me
and I can’t deny you.

I would build my own boat
but for now my place is on the land.
Tell me I am loyal,

that I should become your flotsam.
Your burial at sea will mean
there is nothing like the sea

left inside of me.
Building this boat is practice
for being empty.

Robin Cedar

Robin Cedar is an MFA candidate at Oregon State University, where she teaches English composition and serves as poetry editor and social media manager for 45th Parallel. She has been published in The Fem, Leveler, Moonsick Magazine, Wildness, and elsewhere. She’s currently working on her first book of poetry.