The ocean didn’t stop moving all night
Neither did the woman I lay beside:
She too rolled in forceful exhales
Snatching space like the mounting tides.
The lip of the sea was coming for me
And so was the woman I lay beside.
Birds of prey circled the surface of her mind,
Dying to dive To scavenge the fruits of her world inside.
Like the beach, I fell apart
Eaten alive By the roaring tides
Of the woman I lay beside.
She wanted what I could not give.
Seaweed insecurity
Gripped my throat
A glass was smashed. I: dragged
From bed. Shouts of,
why won’t you-
I: turning red
in shame.
Still, at dawn I’d help her paint the wall
Chipped by the champagne flute she’d thrown.
Laughing at how she’d missed my face.
Neither of us cleared the glass that lay Scattered
Across my beach. Where the child comes to play.
Frothy and cold, she smiled;
In the daylight I retained some power.
She gave me back my grains of sand,
I looked bigger in the noontime hour.
Her seaweed was strewn
Across my shore;
Debris she’d left behind,
As she curled back into herself once more.
But the night always promises to fall
And I lay beside her again
Tense. Waiting. For her body to crawl
Across my brittle ends.
lisa minerva luxx
lisa minerva luxx is an award-winning poet, playwright, activist, and essayist of British-Syrian heritage. In 2021, luxx released Fetch Your Mother’s Heart. She has written three verse plays including Eating the Copper Apple, what the dog said to the harvest, From Dusk til Dawn, and The Moon is Listening. Alongside luxx’s Channel 4 short film Lesbian., her other works have featured on BBC Radio 4, TEDx, and ITV. luxx founded Nehna Hon, an anti-racist collective in Beirut who setup free daycare, job support, rent, and food assistance plus urgent action for victims of the kafala system.
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