Two dreamers on a barge

i.

encrusted with salt
and hair stiff with
the sea, we searched
for endless horizons
but failed to find even ourselves.

night chanced upon us pressed
against opposite ends of the
deck, obstinately shivering
as if the damp was enough
of a substitute.

ii.

the sunset glows blue
up north, breaking into
a million pieces like snowflakes,
and if your silhouette spells
anything, it is that lines are not
forever, nor light, which soaks
into the edges of the earth.

we are sitting balanced against
stone oars in see-saw motion,
eyes clutching like shoulders against
arms, and hands folded against
our backs, balled into fists.

iii.

brittle bones join
the slow creak of the sea.
the wind is an augmented fourth
against you, and the way you
pull up your collar makes me think
you’re trying not to listen.

something spans
the space between us -
stretched and tendrilled
like egg-white or elastic,
and I daren’t move.

iv.

our barge has frozen into the
sea, but we are drifting,
and I only imagine that your
fingers are cold, left out in
the wind like this. I don’t think
we’re breathing quite as much
as we were before.

all I want is your shirt sleeve
caught against my belt loop,
tearing ever so slightly like
fish in summer.