The mala around your wrist is meant
to remind you to go back to the stone-year.
When you were cold, locked out,
cocooned, no one called.
Tone deaf and friendless, you decided:
less collage, more song.
More song meant you got limber,
abandoned the agreed-upon ocean.
You remember it as difficult,
but that part was easy.
If time can unmoor itself and cast off
so can you—