Our bed is rocking like the sea
beneath a ship. Your smell
is as unfamiliar as the harbour
to the tramp steamer.
I cling to you, water to skin.
The cells of my body are shoals
of excited fish and now the funnell
blares and the nets
are broken, the mesh has caught
on a reef. Sailors’ arms
are glimmering in the regular
strobe of reflectors, the beams
of a squeaky, revolving
lighthouse. The gulls are ripping
the kraken to shreds: it chews
and digests its own body.
The ship splits in two,
the decks’ tiny splinters pierce
the entire surface of the skin,
a pool of diesel spreads across the water.