Hello ocean lover

Hello ocean lover. (Anoxia lifts.)

Submerged in the aqueous dark you splay out,

like the sinewy kelp of our tangled-up youth.

Your breath sighs anew in the cups of my ears,

fleshy shells pressed to inky percale pulsing fast.

Nephrite eyes, all prismatic, invite me to plunge:

to be dashed on the rocks we’ve both honed, scrimshaw-like.

Absent vortex of arms: clench and pummel and hold, you

abrade me with stubble on still-boyish jaw, as

I’m lapped by the deft tongue-like bodies of eels;

even pleasures now brandish incisors, it seems.

And at last you will wash up, decay next to me,

an ocean of platinum poured from the sky.

Long ago, I released you — still wriggling — to sea,

I devoured you in secret with lustrous spined lips

not recalling your taste afterward (much like tears?).

Yet our bones lie in wreckage offshore, even now:

I still long for — yet fear — the low tide…