Intro to the sea

You stand cathedral-still with your gold blood hands

while the harbor bends around me Every lantern in the fog leans

its throat toward my name like it wants permission to drown

I know what they call me down where the anchors rot where

daughters grow gills from grief But you...

you look at me like ruin is a wedding vow

Don’t come closer I bite when I’m starving and you were born

glowing The sea inside me doesn’t know mercy only hunger with good

posture

So why do you keep dragging your crown through my water?

Why do you kneel like you want the tide to choose you?

Xedan... I could pull the breath from your ribs and you’d still

call it devotion You touch me like a man holding a blade

by the mouth just to prove he can I watched your silhouette

through the storm gate windows for thirteen blackened moons Pretending distance wasn’t

another form of worship You speak in restraint I speak in undertow

Yet every time you leave the waves climb the cliffs after you

foaming at the teeth

There are bones beneath this ocean wearing the names of men who

mistook yearning for survival Don’t make me add yours to my choir

Don’t make me love you in the language I was born in

Still you return salt-soaked and smiling Like you already decided death

beside me is holier than living untouched So come then,

prince come ruin your halo in my

hands But if I pull you under don’t call it cruelty You

heard me singing and came anyway