The bed is a lifeboat 
wide, buoyant 
impermeable

or a skiff, or squat kayak,
something to be kept afloat.

It does, indeed, hold your life
and his,
your life together-
lashed.

It is the place for love-making,
tussling and dreaming.

Often, very often
it is the place for words that will be repeated over time
you will learn by heart.

And underneath, always a
shadow, 
skimming like a shark,
The lack of belief that it will hold.

That we will hold.

The raft is a safe mooring
a place to bundle onto,
to find relief,
gratitude
and fervid tears. 

It is stout, 
but naturally sways off-kilter 
with the tide and errant winds.

and so impossible to fully trust,
to one hundred percent believe in.

Because the boat belongs to you,
you yourself must right it.

One or the other of you.

The easiest way to balance -
four hands clasped, 
eyes locked,
standing slowly to find ballast.

There is no way to do it solo,
at least not for very long.

Still, I have sea-blindness
and imagine the surf is meant for me alone,
which it may be but it will never be. 

My brain is battered by
grief, rage, and the blinding shame of sun.

But that solitary craft
built for two,
there is no way off, 
only salty spits off coastal rock,
and a riptide that will kill you.

And silken Sirens who echolate my fantasies
of what this voyage should have been,
could have been.

Still I crave the bracing cold, the roiling
wildness 
and the effervescent risk, 
and the perfect golden hour,
limning the sea's vanishing point.

It is a watery specter,
untethered, based on nothing at all.

Because alone
adrift,
I churn and fight the froth, 
forearms shaking, weak.
Panicked. 
I beat at the current, inhaling brackish water.

Even with ribs light and heart strong,
this is the ocean after all.

But when you hear their lilting promises,
you swear you will die - 

you will die,
to be off that goddamn boat.

Still
hard hands pull you back,
gentle croon
and a solliloquy of sleep takes you down,

a forgetting and a remembering.

A kiss of flannel,
a leg thrown over a furry thigh,
a dry, cracked sole of your foot snaking into the warm crook of his knee,

Anchored to the familiar.

Still, I will never stop leaning over the hull, 
drawn 
to the dark shimmer,
who wouldn't want that?

To be free.

But this gentle night, we lie
and scan the zodiac sky for darkening violence,
and we pray for a zephyr breeze.

Hands held.
Survival is this mattress,
our salvation only
to nod beneath the mantle that exists between our bodies.

So let the salt spray sting the cuts, 
blind my eyes senseless
even more,
bind me to this ridiculous chimera of air,

even when I drown,
especially then.

The bed is a lifeboat.