I stare down
Quick.
I float in the rush of her waters.
Love lies grave and reaches,
Up, with fingernails crusted.
Nail beds charred from age old smoke;
Salt rubbed high in the wounds.

All of the old love
Lies here.

Salt in the wind and her tangles
Flipped over one shoulder,
Just the way I used to like.
How can it have been three years?
In between rows of bottles,
Runtimes ticking low on the screen,
We ate take-out on the floor
And dreamed long dreams with no name.
I swayed right up to the banks of her,
Pawed at the brine and the silt.

Like the Red Sea,
She parted.

Laid me down,
Soft.
We floated in each other’s waters.
The seagulls’ wings carried our voices.
As we lapped at the tears,
So forlorn.
They tasted of bitter;
Of who she had loved before me.
I don’t want to leave you, she told me.
You don’t know the person I am.
Her lips opened wide when she said it,
And her arms came around to embrace.

There, in her waters,
I burned.

To be rebuilt in the shape of her goddess;
Oh, what have I done to deserve
Her kind, lovely smiles?
The iodine touch of her
Smooth fingers, pale,
Tracing the lines of my fear?
I think about her,

The way that she looked,
That morning.

Slipping out of the door
With our love at her back and the promise
Of the bright morning,
Blood singing clear in her veins.
I love you, she told me that morning.
I’ll see you when I get home.
She put the keys in the ignition,
And danced with me, one more time,
Inside the domed palace that gleamed there -
There, inside of her mind.

She was buried with salt
In her mane.