MARINUS

Alarms chirp and squawk
I defend you, assault the plastic gulls,
slap the snooze buttons on their digital-numbered wings
Feeble, frivolous fights with time,

to keep you here
and to keep me here
Between pale blue sheets, pastel blankets
pressed together, smoldering and fluid coral limbs
the sloping lighthouse
of your arm
rising like a wave
to crash gently upon my shoulder
pull me under

and I’m lost in the pulse,
your heartbeat an echoing pink and spiral seashell
that I hear through invisible, white gills on my back
Back to Sleep,
that siren song sliding out of glass bottles

… I wake again—I’m late for school, little fish—
and break through the surface,
that cotton comforter tide,

Lower my kelp-tangled face to steal a blessing from your lips

Know that I’m caught in your undertow and
have no choice but to always return
ship to harbor, to port

I am a speckled fur seal, beaching myself
on the warm sands of your foam-tufted shore
Drowning-full of summer swells