Drowning Days

You have that slow-drowning feeling to you.
I can feel your fingers around my ankles,
and you are pulling me down under perfectly calm blue-green waters.
Wrapping yourself around me like seaweed;
A slow wet hug squeezing the air out of my lungs.

You can breathe down here.
You can open your mouth and let the water flood in.
You live on the tiny microbes filling your belly.
Feed on their brief lives and snuff them out with your constant hunger.
Your eyes illuminate from the inside out so you can see in the darkest depths.
Your skin has turned to scales in these ebbing tides.

I, however, am drowning in your sweetness.
You are whispering "Ophelia" in my ear;
over and over and over again.
I can feel petticoats growing heavy around me;
these delicate chains of blue flowers twisting in my fingers.
I stare at the too clear sky and feel the water lapping at my cheeks.

"Ophelia... Ophelia...
He is crushing your heart;
pulling you down.
Can you not see his insanity,
bringing you to sandy ocean floors and rocky river bottoms?
Your body will flow over miles of sunken civilizations,
forever immortalized in sailors' hoarse-throated songs.
Ophelia... Ophelia...
You can not breathe water like air, girl..."

These ebbing tides that keep you alive with movement,
will eventually wash my body ashore.
My mouth full of pearls;
My eyes covered over in scales.
Your marshy touch will dress my body in cat-tails and swamp bugs;
Little brightly coloured fish will dart from my heart to my lungs.
Seabirds will nest in my hair in the filmy half light from deep unexplored pools.
I have become the shipwreck of your soul,
And those are pearls in my eyes.

Good night, sweet ladies.
Good night.
Good night.