~If~
Liz Fink-Davenport
I'll love a man with so much ocean in his veins that when his hand strokes the side of my jaw I smell the bite of reef inside his wrist pulse. Sand gritting the hairs of his chest. And I hear the rush of a new wave forming from the inside of his palm like a shell. His hair washed white tipped from the sun, pulling color from him...and to him. If I'm going to love again, he will have the moon's powerful tow, like a rope tied to the edge of the waves. His stars and planets will be my net and I'll rest in it like a woven bed. Eyes that shine out of dark cold places. Explosions of mass. Fireballs thrown across the black. Cosmos walking.
There are things we don't tell anyone. Even our closest that we say we tell all to. No. We keep some secrets deep and dark and salt water heavy. Locked. In the murk. I once loved a man with a fish hook burned on his right eye so that the sea would never forsake him. Right there in the depth of the bluest blue was a white hook to remind me of my heart. Rip tied down. Locked in him. I once loved a man with Orion's Belt freckled on his chest that I could trace it like a connect the dots. I would go up and back down. And never find a universe in the brown dots but just a pattern.
A fish hook and a constellation. The same man. A shell of a palm. Empty. And the briny brush of lips over again. A night sky in his eyes and stars
and promises.
Moons rolling from his laugh. And wave. Upon wave. Crashing.
Secrets. And the roar of tides. That ebb. And flow. Of gravity and the moon and...
your ability to love.
You were never able.
A tidal pool. Versus the ocean.
A candle lit. Versus the sun.
If I'm going to love...I want ocean deep and solar system wide. Because I deserve
all the expanse of the heavens
and the pitched fathoms of the sea. My loves, you do too.
I want it all. All of him.
If I'm going to love again.