Year 2 - A Luxury Cruise on a Sinking Ship by Ellora Sutton

The railings are rusted red,

Rickety,

Not to be trusted.

Not a bit.

Not at all.

Lean on them

And you will fall -

Into what?

Black.

You will feed the whales and

Rise and fall,

Rise and fall

With them

On their landscape backs.

There is mould on the walls,

Stars of it. A constellation.

The 75-year-old -

The one with red curls and pearls all over -

Uses it to read fortunes.

She sees New York in it,

The places you will go,

Impossible things

That might be possible tomorrow.

The chef says the hull is like Swiss cheese,

Holier than the kind the moon is carved of.

The water waltzes in in sighs,

Breathing out secrets.

Shush.

At night

Stardust seeps in,

Creeps in,

Crawls into

The place where dreams are kept.

You tell the captain we’re sinking

And he says, ‘don’t you worry, pet,

My ship hasn’t sunk yet.’

The carpet is worn down to the quick,

Nail-bitten fingertips,

With bald patches shining through,

Creaking, creaking,

Weeping underfoot.

A child fell through.

He rides whales now,

Drifts through the sticky continents

Of There and Not There and Inbetween.

Drifting.

The singer who lost her voice

Weeks ago

Cradles her microphone to sleep

And on the ship’s shoebox stage

Holds it to her chest.

The sound echoes into

Echoes into

Nothing

But the waves.

The waves lap on.

The unruly hair of a woman

Who has seashells for eyes

And seafoam for lips.

Her soul is a grain of sand

Locked in a glass bottle,

Bobbing.

She sinks her shark teeth

Into the hull.

Crunch. Like an apple.

On deck our feet are wet.

It’s okay.

We haven’t sunk yet.