You gleam in the twilight of other diver’s lights
and I am not on your mind.
The flagship of the Italian line, your ghost
still passes, a slick white leviathan on foggy
nights, drifting over the black waters
off Nantucket. In truth, your hallways
and ballrooms lie 250 feet down.
But I found you, and was bloodcrazed
by your beauty. Perception is slippery
here, with your nitrogen bubbling
inside my body, your railings suspended
in green twilight, your tilted decks,
your ballroom glittering with particles.
You bled oil for days, but the gash
in your side is still laid against the sand. I once dreamt
I felt your long hull sliding under my hand.
As if I were still alive, and you would always steam by.
When I surfaced, my two hands were stiff at twelve and nine.
I am still holding to you: a broken thought
filling with silt, where I let you fill
my arteries with poison.
Oh this feeling like snowfall, the fleeting bursts
of sound, the collapse of air pockets. I have glimpsed
your insides, the silted floor of your dark frontier.
In the end, I’m as damaged as you are.