by Jessica Covil

My phone goes off at 2 am,
but I just let it buzz.
In the morning,
I'll decide how far
to wade into this sea of texts—
the high tide I expect
every so often.
My own masochistic interest
in what it will carry back to shore
this time.

A wave can be defined
as "a repeating and periodic disturbance"
which sounds a lot like
what we always called "episodes”—
though I'm not sure
that's what this is yet.
Sometimes it's just you, yourself
(whatever that means)
pulling hard at everything you can
until you are too much
and too angry
for even you to handle.

Those of us in the water
should probably know by now
the reach of you,
the power of your hold;
your tendency to conjure up
things past or lost
when it suits you.
But the universe
only has
so much energy.
Every rise demands a fall,
and you will carry us all with you
for the breaking.

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Jessica Covil is a third-year PhD student in English at Duke, where she is also pursuing graduate certificates in African & African American Studies and Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies. Her research focuses on literary representations of community, belonging, and “home” in 20th-Century American Literature, and on connections between the poetic and the political. Some of her research-influenced poetry can be found at https://sites.duke.edu/representingmigration/poetry-reading/.