Three words you spoke whilst we were drinking on the deck of your dad's old boat, your breath smelt like whiskey and the salt in the air. In those moments I convinced myself I needed you more than ever. Every text you sent since that night was another blow, another bubble of air stolen from my lungs as I breathed in the salt from under the water. You were the one that haunted my dreams every night - the looming storm in the distance. There's a reason they call them rogues. They travel fast and alone just like you did, wasting away their lives with whiskey and cigarettes as they breathe in other people's salt air like pirates, or thieves. As we dangled our feet in the cold ocean water I realised that I should've sent out the SOS call, that there should've been a crew to bail me out of the flood that came through the hole in the hull that was your chest: A flood that forced my engine and radio to stop working.
What could I do?
I was the one who spoke first but never considered what the words would mean, never considered that it was what you wanted, to reel me in and then hit me with one-hundred-foot faces of God's good ocean gone wrong. Loving you was a risk; you were so unpredictable. Loving you was a risk because I couldn't have known that you would hit me with some wave and leave me on my own. They always say that the captain stays with the ship in still and storm, but this isn't the Mediterranean and the waters are cold. So I knew I wouldn't have to struggle in your embrace for long. Because your tongue was a rudder and steered all the words you said, and the wrong words stranded you and me on and island of violence; in the morning our bodies would always wash up on the shore of your bed, thirty miles away from home. So I became the one who haunted your dreams of beauty under the sea, breathing in the salt under the surface.
I need you like water in my lungs.
