Sometimes, I thought your eyes looked waterlogged,
wet enough to pour floods of biblical
proportion.  I knew you as an ocean;
you slipped through knobby fingers with each pulse.
You growled like waves, and growling, you beat salt
into sunburn with the ferocity
of three thousand hurricanes—no more, no
less.  My palm fronds will always sway for you.

But you never swayed, stayed, or even said
what you meant as your whitecap words washed blind
over coral.  You stung though, full of bone
shards and plastic.  Let’s face it, you’re filthy.
You smell like oil and death. Your rotting weeds
strangle the pilings of flimsy gray docks.