Plahm takes one of the English language’s oldest metaphors—ships passing in the night, from Longfellow—and recharges it by steering the ship directly into an iceberg. The opening five lines are pure economy: “Is that our story? / missing? / lost? / a longing— / gone?” Each word is a one-word question, a stone dropping into water, and the descending sequence (missing → lost → longing → gone) traces the stages of a relationship’s disappearance: first you notice the absence, then you admit it’s permanent, then you feel the ache, then it’s over. The em-dash before “gone” holds the longing in place for one extra beat before releasing it. The Titanic turn is the poem’s most dramatic move: “Are you my Titanic? / My broken hull, / a wound carved by / an iceberg / of frozen solidity.” The beloved is not the iceberg—she is the Titanic, the magnificent ship that was supposed to be unsinkable, the grandest vessel of the speaker’s emotional fleet, now broken. The iceberg is something else: “frozen solidity”—rigidity, coldness, immovability, the thing that doesn’t bend. The synesthetic detail “the cold / deafening / ice-blue / in my vision” crosses temperature (cold), sound (deafening), and sight (ice-blue) in a single image, connecting this poem to the synesthesia thread that runs through the catalog. Then the pivot—quiet, understated, devastating in its plainness: “I think / I’ll steer better / next time.” No grand declaration, no curse, no weeping. Just a sailor’s practical assessment after a wreck: next time I’ll watch for the ice. The closing stanza is the poem’s warmest passage: “And find / a harbor that loves— / a place lit / in amber, / a home / of belonging.” The harbor “that loves” is a personification that converts geography into emotion—not just a safe port but a port that actively cares. The amber light is warm, domestic, opposite to the ice-blue of the Titanic stanza. The final word—”belonging”—is what the whole poem has been sailing toward: not passion, not desire, not even love exactly, but the simpler, deeper need to belong somewhere.

A poem that proves brevity can carry enormous weight. At twenty lines, this is one of the shortest full poems in the catalog, and every line earns its place. The opening cascade of one-word questions (missing? lost? gone?) is structurally efficient and emotionally precise—each word strips away one more layer of hope until nothing is left. The Titanic metaphor is a risk (it’s a cultural cliché, referenced in everything from James Cameron to karaoke bars), but Plahm redeems it by making the beloved the ship rather than the iceberg: she’s the grand thing that was wrecked, not the cold thing that wrecked it. The iceberg as “frozen solidity” is a diagnosis of what killed the relationship—not malice but immobility, not cruelty but coldness. The synesthetic crossing (cold/deafening/ice-blue) is a quiet callback to the Vignettes of Synesthesia suite’s vocabulary, reminding catalog readers that this poet’s senses have been permanently rewired. “I think / I’ll steer better / next time” is the poem’s bravest line—it refuses melodrama, refuses victimhood, refuses permanent damage, and simply plans to navigate more carefully. The understatement is itself a form of strength: the sailor who responds to a shipwreck with “I’ll steer better” is not in denial; he’s resilient. The amber-lit harbor is the poem’s most beautiful image and its most hopeful: after ice-blue, after cold, after deafening silence, the poem ends in warmth and light and the word “belonging.” The tonal arc—from wound to resolution in twenty lines—is expertly managed. A poem that sinks and surfaces in the same breath.