Rumored Animal
Carolina Casabal
Wind claps the expansive celestial banners
and I taste the darkened water, the early earl grey
where we went out looking for blue—
our hands, bound together in the duller clouds’
deep secret, wild sea but little falls claimed us
in a room where we calculated our light. can you stop
loving once you’ve started? now I taste
the darkened water, the early hope that this will be
better than last time. blue lingered that day inside
the library, haunted itself in every encyclopedia
vellum, languages I didn’t know existed held
its glint in my hands, tufts of weight and I taste
the darkened water, the sea I cannot stop, early
sign of an intangible, a rumored animal murmuring.
Carolina Casabal
Carolina Casabal grew up between Manhattan and Sagaponack. In the past year, she completed an MFA in poetry at Columbia University and received special recognition in the 2018 Academy of American Poets competition for her poem “It Was Bright” (forthcoming in Small Orange Journal, October 2019).