Scylla Bathes Anne Daly

Scylla Bathes

after Scylla by Ithell Colquhoun

Your breath comes dressed as a wave that spills across the rigging of my flesh. To hold afloat the stanchion of my ribs, the keel-work of my spine, that curves toward the edges of the bath.

So when you pull away you leave me silted, the upturned mouth of a shell that slants an O at the loss of its water bruised sky.

Until I grip the sides to stop my slippage, finger ceramic, pruned by an exodus of salt. Untwine the light that skiffs around the breaches of my thigh, the anemones of bone. An untethering from the absenting tide.

Anne Daly

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