Your jelly legs are the sea-
sickest of all sailors, tumbling and pitching
on my rolling shoulders. The gulls squawk –
or is that you? – and I smell the ocean:
salt and rum and dead things. You moan,
my bipedal mermaid, and I know
you’re glad it was I and no other who carried you,
limp and lifeless, out of the Tempest
Bar and Grill. And though I’m spearing you,
I saved you from the small fry and the pool sharks,
who would have nibbled your fingertips and fins,
sucked the kisses from your cold lips
and the sweet marrow from your thighs
and hips. I think about how many sailors
may have hauled you up before, but I know none
could hold you and rock you like me.
Though you are on land, you still have
a bit of the sea in you: your blue eyes swim,
your hair waves like Sargasso to my rhythm,
and in you I can feel the tides swell, then
retreat. You turn away, toward the ocean.
You close your eyes, curl into yourself – why
do you batten down the hatches? The Tempest
was hours ago, and you’re safe here, now, with me
as you never could be out there, surfacing in pools
of streetlamps’ shallow light Is it not safer
for you, my lost, sea-drunk creature,
to be here aboard my strong ship, to lie here in my
warm bed, my steady arms, with no tumultuous surges
but mine?
[Perhaps you will remember this haiku {it's okay if you don't}. This is an expansion, I suppose, of that haiku. Also, I told my Creative Writing class that I would write one with sexy times in. If you call rape sexy times.]
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