Shipwreck

I would rather have been struck by lightning than have tasted your riptide

You are not the years and years of thunderstorms I never learned to be afraid of

The decades of turning out the lights well before the power went out

I thought you were my shipwreck

Thought you were the splintering bow my doomed schooner should clock as its true north

And me- never more than driftwood

Or every plastic straw- a deathtrap for all that never deserved me inflicted upon them

In another life 

I made my own life raft

Out of seaweed and my own teeth and vertebrae 

In another life

Karma set your hull on fire long before I ever sullied my cornea with the sight of you

In another life

Both my retinas tore

And all I ever saw again was an internal ocean of my own platelets 

And in the darkness

Your words never sparkled, never cast any spells at all

In another life 

You choked on the cyanide of your own bullshit long before we met

Long before you thought me a pawn in your diabolical game of chess

May your saltwater gambit scuttle you straight to hell, you electric eel of a man

You were not my shipwreck

Not true north

Not anything but algae

Mucking up my current

You don’t deserve the lowest tide of my wake

If a shipwreck is my future

I will arrange my own damn deck chairs

But shipwrecks were a lie you told

My cards read

Mother of Cups

Father of cups

Son of Wands

no calamity

Now I only shield myself from the rain

But you know what they say

Red sky at night…

And tonight my skies were as red as my heart

As red as my tongue dripping blood orange juice all the way down my neck

Red as my shirt under those lights

Red as my cheeks under those lights

You said they looked like apples

You took a bite

How are your skies looking

Mine are as red as my heart