My love, you are an ocean.
Your arms are jetties, reaching out into the water, encompassing fish and seaweed.
Your fisherman's hands bear a deep roughness, rivaling sand across my untouched skin.
Their scratching surface rubs me raw, chaps my lips and splits them.
You drink the blood.

My life has been hazy until you.
Now it is overcast with fear and timing.
Inside you, a bomb sits, multiplying, increasing.
You pump manufactured time in through those arms I crave so much.
There is nothing I can do to help you.

Instead, I watch shoals swim by, each holding a piece of you.
So desperately I want to scoop them up, and rip their bellies open,
Marvel at their ribs, but not stop until I've ripped them
Skull to fin, and found your ink scrawled along their spines.

To call myself drift wood would be an insult to you.
Your past lovers' eyes shine like sea glass.
In time, and in you, they've become softened chunks of green, brown, and blue,
Shimmering across your hands. Across your chest, they gather.
Their brightness shows in your wrinkled eyes.

How I have come to love the etched time across your face.
Each inch something new I am discovering, yet discovered
In dives and ships alike. Maturity gathered and processed from
Nails and knuckles.  Ugly shoes, and screaming babies throwing salt across you.

Cracks run about your legs. You shake. You become
Stable; secure; sturdy.
Drag my body down. I want to flit under your surface, and gasp
Without breath, at the vast depth of you.