Tidal Room

His neptuned chair is moored in shirring water,
and she, skin like shifting kelp, fixed byssal feet
anchored there, gasps a lazuli blue. Waits.

Everything here is further than any known land.
Walls mind their rarity of air in illegible things,
a graffiti of algal forests where she dare not go.

Some days, his smile opens her out vulnerable
as an oyster. On others his hands, cold pious fish,
slip, snap her shell shut. All this bruised sea

holds her, caved, an inner immigrant. Maps are lost,
scribbled, hidden, he knows she'll never find the way.
Listen. A wicking of surface water, linted sails hush
past, somewhere lies a quiet redemption of islands, hope.