The sun cracked
a runny egg into the sky and in the ocean
we picked through yolk and white shell.
You put seaweed in your hair and I laughed.
 
You put seaweed in my hair and I yelled
at you. On the shore, I toed the butt
of a cigarette and you buried me as I read
my book. In it, we were children,
 
the sea was only Coney Island.
You made music, exuberant,
ran to the boat docks.
Back inside our motel room
 
you laugh at the long white
lines in my thighs. I run when you try
to touch the underside of my arms, where the whitest
skin is. My mind is
 
an old boat named Debbie Anne on a big blue
sea. In the boat there is a pile of rope that burns
my palms. I do not know how to use it.
You will live there. I split an egg on my rope-burn
 
and eat it without a fork. A mouse lives
inside the rope and I feed him when I remember.
He is full all the time. I slip in the shower, split
my head and am embarrassed.
 
You coddle me. You crawl into the split of rope
tangled in rope, tangled in mouse, tangled in me. You
will live there the rest of your life.