It started well: she held her wrists for tying
and said goodbye to girlhood, he to life;
for fame was worth the lesser pangs of dying,
and she’d been bred to be Somebody’s wife.
And so she wept and prayed and used her lotion;
he roared and flapped his wings and whet his claws;
but nothing inched across the crawling ocean;
only the seasons turned; time slowed to pause
and stopped. Until they found beneath their sorrow
that neither really needed to be sad,
one sea-hushed, star-filled night; “Perhaps tomorrow?”
became: “Shall we?…. Tonight?”. And when they had,
they watched themselves become a metaphor,
though neither cared to think, or said, what for.