This poem was published by Open Wide Magazine in 2010

I raise my hands

standing on the sand built wharf.

You grin at me

like a horse chewing froth.

The wind slithers

and spits in my face,

the waves gently lick my feet.

The water, well… it’s cold.

Salt crystallises in old battle wounds.

They give us their meagre explanations,

and tell us why we’re no longer on board.

They’ve always judged

my starved frame,

when they were the ones feeding me rainbow meat.

I knew it was suicide,

changing your name,

with my heart buried at sea,

confined amongst bribery and lies.

And the water, well… it’s cold.

It now swells between my toes

as the sea eats the wharf away.

But I am not sorry

to see it go,

dissolving into grain,

tomorrow it’ll be

just another broken shore.

I sold your name for vanity,

I celebrate the destruction of you.

Blowing fragments of your smile

into the wind.

And that is worth watching the ship sail away.