ultimate connection

I strip plastic bark from the grasses, wonder where the trees went, remember home, remember empty oil cans and a twist tie or two, something I forget, wash from my mind like waves washing away the lines I sketch in the sand. In my dreams, they come back to me, drifting in the tides, bottles that call to me as they float, proud of how boldly they exist but still often invisibly. I gather them in my arms but find there are no messages inside, wonder where those important words dissolved, if the water stole them hungrily, but as the setting sun sends orange sparks across the glass, dimming the clouds, cooling the wind as it teases my arms, I realize the bottles are the message, the bags I clutch in my fists, lonely so distant from the secrets they held inside once, and I pour the excess from my skin, let my chosen color drain, have the world, all its sands and clays, mosses and trees, humming wings and frantically grasping fingers, write their poetry into me, dye me their own color which I will accept, refuse to blend in when I wait on asphalt islands, watching plastic skip across the parking lot, searching for somewhere to hold on.