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Where sand dunes beneath the sea
move like duvet folds, slowly and creasing
as age does over faces,
little fishes slide through the silence
of sheets and blow bubbles through fibres.
Or perhaps they hear in colour
and match the shades of milky oceans
to their own dances, practised at night
while Iapetus closes his doors and wraps
a yellow sheet about himself.

Some sailors think porpoises speak
in tongues. Prophets for the pools, they pay
my toll fee in pearls and tell me I am
drowning.
Loose skin peels back like lace.
Do you see my bones yet?
I could lie here and sleep through
fairytales until you do.

Last chance to breathe the corals,
to study the sand for lost war helmets
and old tridents made of shells.
They shatter when you touch them;
bare skin’s an acid.
If fish could paint,
drowned cliffs would tell of gods
and clowns, and how the blue above shakes
leaves through open windows. Evergreen
in the real world, they’ll say,
everblue if you keep breathing.