All Watered Down

I sing for my lover a lullaby. I sing him love songs. I sing to the sun setting over the ocean. I sing to the water’s salty kisses. I sing to the glittering of blue-green scales, to my dark hair, and twisted with shells and lengths of seaweed. I sing of the pleasures I‘ll give him. I sing of sweet nothings.

    Somewhere beyond the sea, he’s supposed to be waiting for me. But he’s not left waiting. Nor am I. My lover climbs up to greet me, his hands slipping on the wet rock. My parted lips lure him to me. My hands are dancing, stroking his fair hair and tracing his face, drawing him to me.

    He’s all mine, my lover is. He’s a cocktail mixed for me and me alone. He lays beside me on the rock. His lips are mine to kiss. His delicious-looking lips. His eyes are the ocean and I drink them all up. His hair is a fine thing to run my hands through, finer than the seaweed that ornaments my cove.

    Bother not with the bottle. His tongue unrolls, that letter in the bottle. He proclaims to the world that I’m beautiful. He praises his god to have found me. He mouths the tried-and-true phrase of loving me. His lips keep moving, won’t stop moving. I want them to stop. I cover them with my own, bringing silence to my song and his clunky bravado.

    The ocean tides pick up on the notes of my song. Sunlight the color of vintage photographs becomes blanket coating the scene. Halos form from hair lit by the sunset. The sea sends back a blessing of shimmering. It seems to be made of diamonds inked with blue, of the stars caught in a net and dropped to land.

    His fingers lace through my hair, grow tangled in the cloth he’s woven. His free hand wraps around the slender dove’s neck called my waist. Rocks dig into my back as he presses down on top of me. His lips flit gracelessly from mine, moving down to my chest. He urges for more. He wants to be closer, to be not just two entities intertwined. He wants to be inside me, to be two entities melded together.

    What a shame that I must lose my lover. What a shame our ways must part. I really was growing quite fond of him. Does it have to end, I ask myself? I could love him. I could grow to love him. He could stay with me on this rock, stay for the sunrise the way others had not.

    I lock tight in his embrace. I slip off the rock, bringing him down to the kingdom of shells below me. I hold him down, pressing him back against the coral until the cove runs red with his blood, a sweet thing ensuring the delicacy of the flesh I bite into.

    In the end, I kill my lover. He wouldn’t have stayed if he had gotten what he wanted, anyway. No one does.