The Sea keeps our Secrets
Bookends on the sofa
me and you
An ocean of salty words between us
Once we rolled and tumbled on steely black waves
Even did it right here a time or two
Now we file ourselves away alphabetically
and eat our dinner in front of the evening news
We’re the children of the undertow
Sucked down deep where the jellyfish go
Crushed beneath dark leagues of pressure
Silently we glow
We lie in bed on squally mornings
as always I am starboard you are port
Outside our window swallows are migrating
carrying love letters on the thermals back to Capistrano
While we sleep like silent skeletons back to back
and hide our useless treasures in our underwear drawers
We’re the lonely shipwrecked ghosts
The interference on the radio
Swimming souls diving further
In the trenches down below
We watch TV in reverent silence
drowning in unspoken journals
Perhaps one day we’ll find transmissions
washed up in bottles on our shores
Perhaps we’ll sing with gulls and guillemots
and follow those same vapour trails where they soar
And all the words to have passed between us
will eventually cease to be
Sunk like cannonballs lost forever
in to the heedless memory of the sea
Rick White is a fiction writer from Manchester UK. Rick has previously had work published in Storgy, Soft Cartel and Vice Magazine, among others. Rick is 34 years old and lives with his wife Sarah and their small furry overlord, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Harry.