you wanted me to see your gods but i am afraid of heights;
i wanted you to touch mine but you cannot swim

you washed your hair in salt by the shore, smiling
with your cracked-skin lips like a perfect line of stitches

holding my head in your wet wet hands,
and i hadn’t heart to tell you that to me you smelt like death

but i suppose you thought the same of i—
like seaweed in the sun, sand in all my joints; breathless

“i’ll get my sea legs some day,” you said,
sealed beneath a new spring moon

and i just, just hadn’t heart to tell you
how these things always tend to end