Harbour

The sea's gifts are oiled and salted, swollen for your mouth's bliss. We have lived too long under the locked lid of winter. Let's crest the season's early warmth and take ourselves down to the harbour. The Jump sisters will be there, Eliza dragging her piano over the cobbles, Charys with her penny-whistle-cheeks, puffed out pinkly, her crinoline billowing in the wind. It whips up out of nowhere. I see you cast your eye up at the scoundrel clouds rolling in. Tread lightly past the sisters. If they see you they will demand impossible tariffs: a silver coin from a fairy princess, gold from a pirate's tooth, blood from the moon. Don't purse your mouth, they'll want that open too.

Follow me down onto the rocks, let's see if we can prise their secrets from them. Bring me the sea's green anklets for my feet. Undress me. I want to dance naked for you in this sheltered spot, and then collapse at the sea's dirty petticoat, put my mouth there to see if I can taste what is hidden beneath its wet skirts.

I can feel the ghosts of all my lovers coming for me, leviathans, travelling silently, unseen. A curlew lifts itself on song alone. The host seagulls heckle their generous, yet unwilling, appreciation I see you now for who you are, stripped of context, connotation, consent. We are supplicants to the wind. My pleas disappear upon its breath. Secrets, trust, who will tell? Not you. Not me. This is ours. We have made it between us. Let me feed you oysters, their sea-clean spunky flavours, ready for your mouth's bliss.

The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele