29
Wreckage
By Rebecca Rose
We bathe in the sea at midnight
Cleansing our skin
Shame and desire mingling in the seaweed we mistake for a net
that will catch us when we fall
He rocks gently in the tide
Just as he did under my body.
He bends metal with his mouth
sews stitches of fire into a night sky
gnaws on barbed wire and swims in broken glass
but he remembers nothing from the crash
he only remembers my body
burning
as we eclipsed into the next horizon.
My father’s ghost hungry inside me
drunk on my blood
Smashing bottles against the cages of my ribs
I know his crimes and I am a perfect mimic
We burned him like a Viking but he was a devil
Fireproof
Set adrift in the sea and born again into my womb
I can feel him
Bobbing for air in my lungs
Lunging to the surface
Proofed against all of my waves.
We trace the lines of our scars into the sand,
body and sea
he remembers my body
every day with his hands