Seashell

Brigitte Winter

I search for you between your legs,
my fingers two mermaids slipping,
slipping into the salty depths
of you
until we surface to
the shriek of gulls
and float together
in the weightless space
between flight
and falling.
After,
back at the table,
your husband makes the old joke
about women and restrooms.
He doesn’t know
that if he held you to his ear
like a seashell,
he would hear waves breaking,
the faint flapping of wings.