Steel Bay

On the bay I watched the sky break heavy clouds of grey

Into a chasm of kind blue which shone through

And smiled at me as you do

When your smile breaks your cheeks like sunlight.

There in the heavy Pre-Raphaelite image

Tranquillity’s soft eyes assured me of a gentle touch;

One I had been longing too much to feel, yours,

And so, I turned my eyes to the blackness of the water

To see something of myself in it.

The lights were too painful to stare at in reflection

For they reminded me all of exploration;

City light, rooftop dancing, the waltz of your eyelashes

Came to me in a mellowed blur so that my blearing eyes

Cried gladly but painfully at the absence marked by light.

Darkness. It’s succulent antithesis;

She whispered to me the recesses of your body

So that I knew no city was worth the streets of your soul.

I watched the lights dance incandescence beneath me

And only wished the sea would set ablaze

For only then it would know the pangs of my heart

Whose dewy marshes were charred and all asunder.

Under the surface we know not what lurks;

I had given you my depths and now I was reminded of it,

Staring into the black steel water of metallic sheen

Whose buoyancy was too ironic to bear.

We had sunk long ago, but the buoyancy shimmered

And smiled at me to say: “You must stay afloat”.

The boats bobbed like your breath when you sleep -

Up and down - like the silhouette of a chest at night.

The air smelt like metal and salt.

You had too. The iron of your blood that pumped,

That spilt in your blushed cheeks.

The salt of your tears on my tongue when

They

fell

From your eyes

To your

lips.

Black steel; my iron liquid, that was you;

All metallic haemoglobin and soul

Whose liquids flooded me and beat me to a pulp.

I wished in that moment to drown there

As I had done in you.

But it was just the sky, the sea

Someone else with me, so I smiled at her

And walked on as the sea groaned despair.

I hadn’t realised the sky too cried when I turned away

And that you had smiled at me all the while

As I stood in tears on the steel-sea bay.

Based off the image above.