drifting in horse latitudes
slow
moving
slow
slow
slouching on the long
mast, sail
slack
compass needles
stagnant
still
hear the soft threat of old wood around rusting nails,
cracked figurehead pulling its face apart as the wood
overdries from
understimulation,
And we feel time growing heavy,
laying the hair flat on our forearms
and pulling us down
our ship
down toward depths
distant,
down in the deep sleep of lunar tug and pull, ebb
and flow,
where we are moved only by the bump of a sleeping fish adrift in the current
or the deep sonar mumble of a whale deep in her nightmares,
rolling slow and sighing deeply,
sound only slipping through to stir our ship and change its course in the wet
sand that drifts in flurries.
to lessen the weight.
Our dishes: gone. Wine,
separating into deeper mirrors on the sea's face. Beds,
hacked to pieces and soaking in the water; clothes,
stripped from our backs, layers of skin drying and the flakes
falling down to the deck
in the total absence
of a breeze
We have nothing more to give,
no choice but to let our ship drown
and to become the softest red crabs at the bottom of the sea,
unpresuming,
pinching each others' wrists, hair,
with gnarled knuckles like pincers,
surrounded by our things
cracked mirrors
soaked papers
with wine stains, puzzle pieces, and socks, small pieces of kitchen and bedside table,
assorted flotsam to portentously mark the site.
None will look for this ship, will discern our fresher bones, once our skins have
been shed and ribs used as clown fish playgrounds, from the jaw of a horse from
a hundred years ago.
There will be no one to witness, no one to drive the boat through these waters, our story.
No one will hear our nightmare songs;
none but us will even know we have been
here
But us--
Kelp will stretch to the surface from deep behind our eye sockets,
Bottom feeders will be full-bellied from the flesh of our forearms,
Snails will trade shells in our waving hair.
Yes, we will have been here.
Here we will be.