What more could I have asked for or dreamt of—this evening seeing my ankles warm in purple water, the sun on my shoulders like an old bird. Here with you in the lap of the sea. I ask if you’ve imagined drowning—if there’s another world in your head that exists in your body like all that water we’re made of. And what would that do my love, your body in bits floating like sparks of light above the heads of fish? Would you then be treasure or ruin? I take your wet hand. I take your salt fingers in my mouth, which are cold against my bright teeth. Maybe later you will take me up that spiral hill of the city center and we will drink sangria, held inside a crystal jug like the blood of a martyr. We will drink down divinity filtered through the flesh of quartered orange slices. The night breeze will wind through my legs and I will think of cats, of slippery beasts beneath the water where we left our dust earlier. I will imagine you as an ancient Spartan, eyes disadvantaged by metal, your body made only to break. On a cliff, the waves roaring below, and you—your gold breast bouncing the sun off like so many arrows.
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Aimée Keeble has her Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow, the alma mater of her great uncle Alexander Trocchi. She lives in North Carolina and is working on her second novel.