She was a profound thing, a thing
of no teeth, all salt.
She lapped, never bit, with her erode clad gums
nibbling at my arms in slow-tide licks.
A clam. A bud of a hyacinth.
I dwelled in her clasp, for I was famished.
And the famished is indelibly
open-mouthed, ever for the forged, for the
mould, should it adhere to the mere bone.
And then, I was a blemish-clad body.
I was a shoreline, carved soft.
She nested like seaweed in the tender,
marooned spots about my form,
a crippled feel to the tide line
of my appeal. The appeal: gnawed, salt-creased,
washed beneath the coddle of the damp sea.
Long precedented.
I was the spit-out, the chewed cud of the deep.
Swollen. Clotted. A darling of the undertow.
She was the ocean’s clothed blade, sliding soft down my throat.
I was surrendered. cluttered.
I was the sea’s wretched beloved.
She was the sea stilled by the names of the women before me.
Artwork by: Pierre Renoir
