Black tower, toppling the sea –
He is forgetting me; he is sitting in flesh on the newly-formed
rocks that bite his skin; he is hungry but a blue sky won’t feed him,
I don’t need him,
I don’t need anybody.


It’s reaching the night, when the fog in his head doubts the warmth of the sun,
when the blood runs thin from his lips to be washed into
no one, no ocean; it’s his eyes that glow even though
he doesn’t think so and
I don’t want him to see me fight for life.


There’s mermaids below the white-capped blades;
I think they’re laughing at him while he’s laughing at me while I’m
vomiting red into blue for an explanation.
Little did I know that he was thrown, that they were blown away by fortune –
that my pleas are not alone in this cave of light.


For every act of love,
for all the times I struggled to keep their voices gentle – I have
found an answer; there are tigers in my dreams and they
fool me into being wrong when I’m in the right,
when I know what is there yet I’m still black and blue with fright.


There, now – that way you can look at a
soldier and fold him to the seeds in the ground;
how can you listen to the sound of the air when it’s not there?
Naked on the rock, he is everything but defiant, everything but
lost – I am calm when I look at myself and discontinue.