Breathing Underwater

You and I are hooked,

Breast-stroking in a bathtub,

Everlasting.

JC reminded me,

You shouldn't make tents of kelp

And pretend you're living in Atlantis

Kelp is fleeting,

It washes away, just as it should.

I'm a sailor, I believed easily, but questions funneled me,

in a whirlpool,

You watched me gasping, arms flailing, tumble-drowning,

And instead of sending a lifeboat,

In the moonlight, you stood starboard on your deck, awe-struck

By my clandestine iridescent elegance under Callisto's Moon.

I needed to find the name of the endoparasite that afflicts us,

So we could remember later the day we found the cure.

What a gift you've been given to be born

A pampered Monday's Child.

With Baleen teeth that only grew straight,

that never needed to learn to bite back.

I can see you watching me surf golden halls

Your eyebrow raised at my impropriety,

In those marbled bathhouses,

As we held pinkies up at whirling tea times,

I laughed at your buttoned-up, slow-beating,

400-pound heart.

Everywhere the Coriolis sea took us,

You paced to match my stroke,

And all who saw wanted to slice us,

to serve me Kaku-zukuri with wasabi and your ginger.

We laughed when they spoke,

Eternal,

We both figured,

I'm not the everlasting type,

Even if I want to be.

They try but can not understand,

We aren't kids anymore,

I'm not worried about the net,

Or the floundering,

Or of my vulnerability,

or even their Deba,

These fears went away,

Restored from your habitual aquascaping,

Hornwort, Zostera, and Elodea.

The Morning Star reminded me.

In our crystal palaces of novel and tome,

Urararitarian nostalgia will send us all the way home,

Searching like sailors with broken compasses,

No matter how long that takes us.

We transformed by staying unalterable,

Breaststroking our bathtub,

Maybe that too is part of

the blind plan,

of Valhalla's Shorelines,

Linger-swim these waters with me?