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I rejoined her at the end of the pier. She wore nothing but flippers made of plaster and a silver ribbon in her hair. We migrated motionless through fields of windless calliope, stagnating tops, and schools of scuttled cuttlefish. She wanted to travel north, I south. A ribald pierrot with tears painted on his lips stopped us midway, beckoning with a trout's tail, but we were too smart to succor his fancy. When it rained metal hooks she remained stock still, her glistening body repelling them like a Teflon mummy. I was so impressed that I oiled her skin with my one lolling lung, never pausing to come up for air. She lapped at my pupils with her navel, claiming there was something wedged in my eye and cooing like a cockatoo the entire time. Was this love? She smiled, sinking the steamship that would have wiped out the entire population and winning us interrational acclaim. Shortly thereafter, a plague of polyps was cast upon every home in the reef and we were depopulated like dolphins. Smearing our bodies with the innards of our would-be victims, we prayed for redemption from skin; three nights later we woke up in a heaven that had been deracinated, feeling diminutive. When I suggested that God must be dead the neighbors caught whiff of it and thrice beat us to death with fishing poles. But by then I had already lodged my leaden anchor at the end of the pier where I rejoined her once again, older but none the wiser. |
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