The Wreck

But what lovers we were, what lovers, even when it was all over— the bull-black, deadweight wines that we swung towards each other rang and rang like bells of blood, our own great hearts. We slung the drunk boat out of port and watched our sober unreal life unmoor, a continent of grief; the candlelight strange on our faces like the tiny silent blazes and coruscations of its wars. We blew them out and took the stairs into the night for the night's work, stripped off in the timbered dark, gently hooked each other on like aqualungs, and thundered down to mine our lovely secret wreck. We surfaced later, breathless, back to back, and made our way alone up the mined beach of the dawn.