“The longing in our faces cannot end until both shores unite, yours and mine…”
-- Virgil Suàrez*
Sky Deck, Promenade
You’ve got me: at anchor, arched back over the deck rail, swimsuit slipped to the side, I’m strolling your shoreline, thinking teeth, tongue and technique. Thinking about the worthy circumstances under which I could allow myself
. . .
to drown here with you.
Observation Deck, Tiki Bar
The making of a luxury cruise ship is always also the making of a vast, well-haunted wreck. The Accident, a promise, not unlike Death’s. This is axiom, accelerated by upper middle class leisure trends and the modern misunderstanding of the word “travel." It's five o'clock somewhere,
. . .
it's a matter of time.
Upper Deck, The Casino
It might not be cool to think about the Accident on a cruise ship. To whisper “Titanic” under the breath on the deck, is like “Macbeth” murmured in the wings. But the wreckage awaits, people! A tidal guarantee:
. . .
we verge always on crashing.
Main Deck, The Spa
Cruise ships make beautiful reefs. Deck chairs calcified by culling. Drowned halls streaked with schools of silvery ****-dressed sorority fishes flashing their empty ghostgirl glares.
. . .
The demise is in the design.
Deck 5, Main Dining Room
A good quick cry in your cabin’s matchbox bathroom, we’ve found, calms the seasickness within. Or, maybe it’s just the gin. So wanders me (engulfed in you) on the shore. Death’s sweet certainty scummy on my tongue, I want to ask you how it tastes,
. . .
we break for air.
Deck 6, Executive Suite Balcony
I map your profile. Or I try. I look for a crag to sweep my lingering thoughts of lifeboats beneath. Why me, anyway? I’m no angelfish. I am nothing (almost.) A spray of white noise in the night’s endless ink. A mouthful of seafoam spat off the stern. I am the lowest of poets with a cruel patchy sunburn,
. . .
I am slurring.
Deck 7, Slightly Smaller Luxury Suite Balcony
A gale catches my blouse in brief breeze-love. An Accident, momentous, sprays me in sea salted understanding—it pools in the kissprints that you left in my sand. Maybe I want me too. Maybe drowning isn't so bad. I let your wake flood the hull,
. . .
and together we swell.
Deck 8, Emergency Exit Stairwell
But the lifeboats linger. The Accident is pending, and from some recess in me, unheard before, the false urgency of the gull’s squawk wails. Within the invention of the ******, lies the invention of the broken ******. Within the invention of the heart, lies
. . .
the invention of poetry.
Deck 9, Economy Cabin 902
The surf beats on, our maps unchanged. I sink into bed alone, abuzz. Men are predictable fishes. The Accident barnacles me over with the stuff of graveyards. I am sorry for pocketing these stones. For thinking that I could walk into the surf, that I could sink with you, with any grace. I take no pride in this ***-soaked wreck, these postcard views ***** in triangle trade residue. A curse, a cruise,
. . .
an all-inclusive escape.