Seratonia III

You were flying in a borrowed blue

BMW. We had it parked by the beach with the waves and the bass

up. The sky was shaking in the window; everything beyond us

was blurred, vibrating, (everything was verbs).

I tried to focus on your reflection in the rearview mirror, and when

you saw me seeing you, you stared right back. The black centers of your eyes

were slowly seeping into blue-green and gold speckled i-

rises. I thought Islands rising out of ocean blues,

and you smiled and I thought sirens when

you started singing La Vie en Rose off Acid Rap and the bass

of your voice echoed after us as we left the car running and crossed, running

at low tide in green tide pools of sand and all their little life below us.

The sun was setting behind your ear (everything was in relation to us)

and a little light was caught in the black part of your eye

so as your gold-flecked iris focused and refocused, jumping

from wonder to wonder, the little light circled the green-blue

circle in the orbital trajectory of a metaphor that had its base

in the universal law of gravitation, and creation myths, and when

I told you this, you said those stories never answered where and when?

So I said, here and now? You were silent. I asked again, us?

And you were silent, so I said maybe in the deepest bass

I could manage, hoping the word would stay echoing where only I

could hear it in the background of whatever blues

Merritt Island was singing

that day. We went swimming

with our clothes on and on the sand and I drowned when

the light left this side of the world and the ocean and sky melted into a blue

of the same muted shade of surrender and the shadows between us

became shadow and we shared it with all the other creatures of the i-

sland and the earth and I realized that a sphere has no base

and this seemed terrifying and I wondered whether the ocean was basic

and, like a child nervously searching for a light switch in his own basement, I started singing

Songs to Survive the Summer to help you survive the come down. Your eyes

were closed when I reached we are the song death takes it’s own time singing. When

I had no more words you laughed. Why would death want to sing us

our lives for his whole life, you know, there is more to music than the blues.

The tides had risen and we wanted to leave. You said I should go first and I did and when

I was on the other side the base of my head was throbbing from the cold waves between us.

I said, now you… … … The stars had started to surface and the sky was a darkening blue.