At some point I realised

the vessel was lying in a great bed of sand

I climbed into the cabin

and looked out the portholes, all I could see
was sand. I cried and cried,

my tears ran out the portholes, tears and mucous

tears and mucous. Time

passed, the reader yawned, the boat began
to rock, to float. I had cried

an ocean. The fuel tank was empty and I didn’t

know how to operate the sails

so I drifted. I collected rain water in a bucket
on the deck and caught under-sized

fish. The cleanest way to relieve myself was to hang

my arse over the side – precarious

in large swell, inevitably I fell from the vessel.
As the ship drifted out of sight

and I floated on the surface I could feel my self

distending to huge proportions. I slapped

a lazy flipper on the water,
flicked my tail and dived.

Time passes differently under water, one day

I surface, clearing my blow

hole. On the horizon is a shape I remember
– a vessel, a harpoon drives

a puncture wound. I bleed a trail of berley behind

of course the sharks, the sharks,

a bite, another bite, I am whittled away until
a resemblance of past lives

washes up on a beach, on a sand dune, the sun

bleaching the dry bones of me

a fragment picked up by a child and taken home.