You dried your coat a third time
and went out, again, in the rain.
It doesn’t make any sense.
You stood there bent,
collecting the dark blue shells
while the rain came down hard!
Even though, already, with your things,
there is a whole bag of blue shells.
You said it yourself, out loud:
they are only so beautiful because
they’re lying on the black sand, rain-
pressed and rinsed, unhandled.
Diaana Afanaseva is a poet born in Yakutsk and raised in Brooklyn. She is pursuing postdoctoral studies at NYU and works as a translator and editor. Her poetry and translations have been featured widely in anthologies and journals such as The Art of Poetry, BOMB, The Nation, and others.
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