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 Clyde 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.
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.