Laura Sobbott Ross: The Walrus in the Tea Leaves

For Doug

Darling, it wasn’t the news you’d expected.
And when you told me about it, I’d giggled,

conjured images of broken symmetries—
kaleidoscope and compass, magnetic poles

and mirrors gone random. I knew what
you were hoping for, how you’d tilted your

throat back and swallowed down the void.
The psychic parsing through the wrack line

for messages left in seaweedy clots of Chamomile
or Earl Gray. Speckle and flack— dark nebula

splat against a bone-colored sky. You said
she’d seemed baffled by the walrus—

awkward animal, all teeth and tail. You
told me he’d risen twice from the wet ashes

that morning, buoyant and robust in his
island cup, nosing through the diorama of dregs

like a seafloor of mollusk shells pursed shut;
his mouth, an insistent imprint on the rim.