Our toilet grew shadows that morning, breathing ammonia. The steward fed it bleach until it learned to swallow properly.
At 2:30 a.m. the sea counts minutes. He splits from our bed like cell division, returns with salt in his pores. We share a queen size ocean, legs evolving into separate species until I graft mine into his currents.
Formal night: the Russian photographer’s accent had fins. “You’re tall,” she said, her words swimming through air thick as water.
She spawned a stool from the carpet.
“He sits. You grow around him.”
“I don’t want to sit,” I said, my voice scales.
“Not you. He’ll be the bait. You’ll be the hook. Wind yourself through his tide.”
“My hands are becoming fish.”
Before the cruise, I painted their fins,
but they kept shrinking, bleeding, trying
to return to the sea.
At dinner, I ordered a fish named after another
fish named after another fish.
“Is barramundi like basa?” I asked.
“No,” said the waiter, swimming through words.
I ate what wasn’t moving:
asparagus veins, potato eyes,
bread soaking in white sauce like
coral dissolving.
Tall Glass of Water consumed my fish. They swam
through his bloodstream all night.
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