Audrey Lee

siren song

we’ll make it real loud: screaming from the lighthouse over the
ocean about how tender we could be: fish-faced baby, the pinched
pink of your hollow lips and how i was like honeysuckle by the
beach: here in june and gone by july: girl who pierced my ear with
hooks: i was numb when blood dripped from my skin where the
barb caught: i didn’t feel the burn of salt water in the wound: i
didn’t feel forms of control: like riptides, hurricanes, sex like a
storm: empathy: when she pressed against the slits in my skin like
gills and i couldn’t breathe: you called my name when you were
drowning: when you hooked a fish by its eye and felt the death in
brine and blood: when your offspring’s squall reached a fever pitch:
hot like the burn of infection, the friction between bodies: i save
you in forms of water in my lungs: asphyxiation like virtue: eternity
with dignity.