Beach Sunset

© Joanna Parypinski

The sun bleeds red
into the water.

I watched, unmoved, as God
slit his throat
and drained himself

into the line
between the red sea and red sky,
where you float, bloated
and blue
like a cold canoe

adrift. You—my mirror-smile,
the light in my eyes—took years
to drown,
and now seagulls
have tugged the eyes from your skull
for lack of fish,

left black-hole sockets blind
to celestial suicide—

and you
left me alone
on the windblown shore,

watching the sun melt
with a wave to its shadow-double
as it splatters
into the wet red grave.

The white nail-clipping of moon
rises, doppelganger of the fallen,
to sing its goodbyes,

and while you lie in the withering
light, the moon and I,
like ghosts,
will tiptoe through the night.