dead name
I name each day
as my own, find
forgetting
the tang of grief
takes time.
Look:
a pomegranate
is a world
I can burst open.
As I pluck each
ruby seed, I repeat
my golden name.
My voice reverberates
off the cave walls,
echoes out over
the still waters
of the lake.
The Sea Cave
Sebastian Merrill is a queer and trans poet whose writing has appeared in wildness, Passages North, Riddle Fence and elsewhere. His first book, GHOST :: SEEDS, was selected by Kimiko Hahn as the 2022 winner of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize from Texas Review Press and will be forthcoming in Fall of 2023. Sebastian is the 2022-23 recipient of the Levis Prize from Friends of Writers. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College. sebastianmerrill.com