Tangles

You gather the lilies in the folds of your thoughts
they are the same colour and feel of your skin,
under a torn silk dress stained with rainwater
You are a white sky
bruised with the sound of the sea

When I lay down with you by the ocean
the lines in the sand
tangled tightly into the lines of your palms:
these become your fishing nets
Inside them, you hold my heart, a seahorse
coiled deep in its fetal position;
the cluster of my lungs, wet and dark as seaweed;
and my eyes, twin seashells
that close shut on their own shadows

I am your mermaid, you say,
and you are my song that washed away

You know the words I was going to say
before I say them
like a forest knows
the shadows that wander through; they are
always new
but always remembered
because their kind has walked there
oh so many
times before