Zee Zealt

Of ghosts lurking deep below.

The sun scorched
boils onto his skin
Salt burrowed into
the ocean-depth
of his open cuts,
thirst and red eyes.

Alone too long
after the storm.
Too many seagulls
circling above.
Too many monsters
lurking below.

The feast of
his brothers’ corpses.
The snap of bone
against the foam.

White-knuckled,
he clung to
the splintered mast,
though every
exhausted nerve
begged him to stop.

The slither of her fin
felt like salvation
or at least the end.

First at his stomach,
where the hunger lived,
then where another awoke—
at the salt-crusted line
of his groin.

---

He tilted his head,
feeling her presence spread.
Light and Airy.
Bathed by the sun, fairy,

Singing the sea songs
Calming his storms.
The sun had been preparing him
for what’s to come—
Warming the hidden parts,
tracing paths within his heart.

Her name was Peisinoe—
the one who bends and turns the mind
Fills it with secret fire,
and leaves the waking will behind.

She came to slake his thirst,
to soothe his wounds,
undo the worst.
But she was thirsty too.
She drank his longing
till it was through.

“I’ve always loved
the almost-dead,
those who arrive
too late to dread,
who learn endurance
is a snare,
a slow and tender,
fatal care.

The body loosens,
stripped of bone,
when hope is gone,
when they are alone.”

Carlos Fonseca

---

He loved her truly,
in that fevered breath.
Their sea-slicked lips met.
The eyes of false mercy
grew wet.

He whispered
a love confession
to her.

Then an apology
to the ocean gods—
and drove the rusted
harpoon through
her blackened heart.

Her flesh became
his marrow’s heat.
Her blood, the wine
that filled his thirst.
He stitched her skin
to catch the gale,
a ghost-pale shroud
for a driftwood sail.

Her name was Peisinoe.
The splinter of storms.
The sister of shoals.
The bride of the derelict.
The one who turns the tides.
The one who unmoors
the lonely stars.

The famous ship,
that never sinks.
A vessel of bone,
that’s always full
of rum and youth.

---

No woman’s hand could anchor him.
No perfumed shore could make him stay.
She changed him past all hope of cure,
And tore his gentler parts away.

In every harbor’s lantern-glow
He saw her shoulders rise from foam.
He barred his door to human warmth.
No other pulse could find his home.

He kept her name behind his teeth,
A shard he would not cast aside.
He drank with men.
He sailed with ghosts.
But only Peisinoe lay at his side.

At night he turned toward empty air,
as if her salt was in his hair.
The only time he felt at peace
was when the moon was whole and bare.

Then silver light would flood the deck,
And in that hush he felt her near—
Not soft, not kind, not what she seemed,
But cold and endless as his fear.

He aged, but never let her go.
No other love could take her place.
For once you’ve kissed the mouth of storm,
No quiet shore can feel the same.

And when the sea reclaimed his bones,
He gave no cry, he made no plea.
He went the way he’d always lived—
Close to her,
in the depths of sea.

Corto Maltese