we joined hands and wrists and hearts and swam across the river,
our bodies silver in the moonlight, bathed by stars as I felt you shiver,
your body staining my skin the color of rose wine
which we poured into glasses and hung from the ceiling with twine.
when we arose from the river the stars were sleeping in their midnight ships,
huddled against the anchors that lay deep in the sky around their skinny hips.
there exists no love in this world that is greater than the language of the years,
and they have passed us by as tenderly and slowly as the sum of our fears:
I am afraid one day we will not be here anymore;
we will never be here again; our bodies will never be aligned on the shore.
that night the moon pulled the tides in and the eddies swirled in the surf,
green and gray as the seaweed that came from their birth.
if I were to have drowned that night I would have pulled you down with me,
to the bottom of the ocean in the deep waves where there lay a quiet city,
made of stone and sea glass and the scales of fish.
as the rolling thunder set in I made you promise to fulfill one wish:
that we will be buried where we are now,
in the currents of the sea and the dancing undertow.