The sea gossips

 

pulling us towards the rocks

while the two brothers are silhouetted against

the horizon; we hold our cigarettes up, conductor’s

batons trying to sway the stars, and we kiss

the hushing waves trying to make us fall fall fall

into the denim depths of this bay that we have only

just met.

 

             Just like how you did, really. In London,

where the stars were shopfronts, the depth was

an ocean of booze and the rocks, our time together

pulling pulling pulling us in, together, kissing, gun

metal black among the concrete and neon piss. Oh,

how much we wanted to handcuff our feet then

fall fall fall into the swaying black.

 

                                    Now, we let the

water take us. The Aegean sea keeping us afloat

the salt like some kind of cleanse as we kick kick kick

our jellyfish legs towards buoyancy. Kissing, tongues

like the tide, simpering under Godlike stars. We wish

you were here, yet we hate you. What is it that drives

a man to fend for himself in the wilds when the wilds

are so close, constantly? We will never know

 

so we drink, we conduct the waves with our amber

winking lights and think of you, like we always do,

oblivious to feelings and the rest of them, where

we are all too close. I wonder, looking up, knowing

that the International Space Station orbits every

ninety minutes, if you will look up too? Your hand

in someone else’s. Thinking about that same black

wash that made you.

​

MAX WALLIS