If I Should Wash Upon the Shore, Dead, Wrapped in Plastic

after Natalie Diaz's "If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert"

like a rotten plum swaddled in wax paper,
I will throw the cut ends of my vocal cords

across pewter lake, let them wrap
like tentacles around your ankles.

While the men examine my body,
I will reel you across the rotting logs

and water-smoothed stones, lizard
tongues of water nymphs, up the lichened

slopes of my chest. If you call me love,
I will swim up your nose, make a home

of your sinuses, press my head against
your tear ducts so you become a rivulet.

Call me daughter, and I will morph
into a muskie riot, pierce the soles

of your feet with my teeth, every step
like walking on splinters. There is nowhere

to go but the bottom of the lake,
eyes fish-scaled by moon’s silver glint,

Gorgonian throat full of glass. I am thinking
backward—de-limbed and gilled,

no heart, six kidneys, severed head
of snakes with eyes to dessicate,

larynx clenched to shrill. I am screaming
scarlet, and no one can hear me

through sturgeon armor, mucus of algae,
my gauzed pupils scanning the shore

for no one who is not coming.