Respite

You say – your body is so beautiful.  And I think living under the sea must do strange things to a man - but I look to see, just the same.

Sheets lifted, a coy appraisal of flesh marinated in the salt and oil of a borrowed summer, this skin I will shed in the grey back home. The chipped red of holiday nails, grains of sand in the curve of my foot, nerves that still pulse in flexing toes. Pliant muscles and the startling white of hidden parts. The ways the ocean has left its mark.

You can’t keep your hands off my fault lines – they start their journey over as I kick off the sheets. You taste of rum and cherries as the tremors build, and you say my body is beautiful when it breaks apart again.

You are not the only one who has emerged from the deep (we are both made beautiful in the early morning light).