by Miranda Williams
While in bed, wrinkled collagen sheets and blanket-drowned heads,
she tells me the seagulls spin in her ribcage, plunge her intestines,
scavenge for more severed muscle and dust.
I trace the trench between her breasts down to her
caved belly. She feels like seaweed
and I cry on her cracked skin.
She holds me as earth eats the
moon.
By morning, her fingers
turn to sand in my hair.
Maybe this is like Virginia Woolf?
She says, laughing over breakfast, slimy
and cold. Her eyes, like cinnamon
or washed sunset, are now
glittering white pearls.
I reply, some are meant to
dry up. Her frown drips
to her neck.
We shower. She morphs
tinged green and dizzy. Her hair falls out in
clumps along with dull seashells and shriveled jellyfish.
Tears burst across her cheeks and I
swath her in my arms. By
letting go, she’ll slide
down the drain.
We wade the beach together.
Kiss with salty, sopping lips and she whispers
shh shh shh shh.
The first wave
crashes against her body and she is
mist.
A shriek echoes.
Still, I run after her, breaking the wet and dirt,
before stepping into her murky unknown depths.
