Among the wreckage
of her soul,
lie shards of ribcage
(splintered like
the stern of a ship
that has weathered
many a beastly storm)
and fragments of heart
(veins as thin and lifeless
as the gossamers
of waterlogged spider webs).

Sunken treasures
you could call these things,
waiting in this perpetual limbo,
this Bermuda of Lovers Lost.

"Girl, overboard!"
he'd cried
(even though he
had been the one
to push her over the edge
in the first place).

Imagine that:

wrists tied behind her--
what hurts more?
The rope burns
or the cuts?--
feet sweeping despondently
across that doomed plank;
she can feel her love's breath--
frigid as Neptune's sea-bound winds--
undulating against the back of her neck.

She turns around slowly,
and he shoots her that
pathological
barracuda grin,
promises her that he cares--
truly, he cares--
that she means something to him.

But many a thing
a pirate does thief,
the truth
being one of them.

The next thing she knows,
she is plummeting
(watch how she does fall for him)
towards the convulsing
stretch of grey beneath her,
and as she whips about
through the bluster and the rain,
she stares up at him
with wild, pleading eyes.

She wants to scream out,
"Why?"
but there is no room
for words (or poetry)
upon the lips of the drowned--
after all,
dead girls tell no tales