slice open a fish stomach and devour its gallbladder under the sun

remember that memory can be easily warped.

clean feet under sea-glass sky: the kind of light-headedness

between two rotten hearts and four-knots wind, laughing

into the horizon, sunlit and golden, back when tomorrows came like tidewaters

we never thought to hold on to

the astrolabe shatters as citylights emerge at the break of dawn. we were but

open-wounded heathens raised by a dystopian chorus

unbeknownst that one of these sunrises was going to be our last

in the old Atlantic tale, the one Bonny birthed and Reed had swallowed

the sea never comes to an edge and bandits like us

could overthrow the system. a deck of kings & queens with aces

sewn into our sleeves: point to a city and i’ll capture it for you,

four summers gone, still waiting for the pewter rings to outline our Rome

we bled the black & white of a jolly roger flag. i told the stars

that i’d be here until every monarch has been dethroned

too young to know what the inlands really were: palaces robbed empty but

the stomachs of men were hoarded with fertile eggs, like fish

and their swords scaling all the way from the rivermouth

in our minds we thought we’d conquer every town but every town

was a gentry’s caste whose door we could not kick down. still our splashes rippled

in every sea, not belonging to any king and we were so proud of that.

feet above whitewater, the sun washing blue off our necks and we tasted of the salt

crystallized on each other’s skin. do you think Bonny and Reed regretted what they did?

four solstices gone, treasure map shriveled up in your laundry pile,

the watergate closes on us. you remember a foreign country’s national anthem

more than you remember the horizon colors under an evening on the aceless deck.

but one of these nights, when the moon regains her strength to pull up the tides

the stars will tell of my promises and you will hear through closed eyes:

i await by the harbor tonight. you find that i have not left the ship in all these years.

there i ask you about only one thing: do you remember that night the way i do?

to hear it from you would be my most crocheted faith, a berthless ship

we curbed next to that obsidian coastline. a flask of vodka from a deserted store.

up on that lighthouse balcony: you tasted of cherries & forever

against my fish-bone heap of a skin.

because a fish remembers just the last thirty seconds. forgive me

when i reach in with infected fingers and gut out its liver, five million times

across five million lifetimes, i have fallen into the dream with you.

the sun dries up what is left of the fish as vultures circle above my head

and for a moment i almost believe they were seagulls sent at your command.

i would’ve let them pick at my organs if i had thought

they would reach you, someday. remember me

as the girl who loved you first.