The Stingray 

I saw you lying on the ocean floor, 
motionless, your skin glinting in the cold, 
aqueous light. When a diver approached, 
you leapt up and were gone— 
I never even looked you in the eyes. 
The white boy who came up on the boat 
behind me wore Ray-Bans and sipped 
Diet Coke from the can. His areolae 
were the color of the swollen strawberries 
that Kiki must have tasted as a girl, 
years before Man Ray crossed the Atlantic 
and asked her to open her mouth. 
In a famous photograph, she’s painted as a violin 
whose sound would never reach you 
at the bottom of the sea—even the breath 
I exhaled at the sight of your ghostly form 
never broke the boundary between water 
and air. In a Noh performance, 
only the spirits are allowed to wear masks. 
Ordinary mortals must ensure the audience 
can see the terror in their eyes. I wasn’t 
terrified of you then, but transfixed 
by the possibility of your venom seeping 
through my skin like a burning honey. 
—Would it fill me like a kiss? I never loved 
closing my eyes to let her tongue trace 
the ridges of my teeth. She left me exhausted, 
like a sea anemone washed up on the shore 
whose lungs are filling with unfamiliar oxygen. 
You pierced me like a ray of sunlight through 
a prism—every inch of me was saturated 
with rainbow, rainbow!—then you let me go.