12:04am, a Figure On the Pier

The dockyard wishes to be written out of this echo, a dissolution which will take place in monastic silence, the quayside hushed: its workers left decades ago to hang their names above coffee house doorways. One by one, the boats clawed their way back into history, but for the insomniac crowd, an old vessel still strums its own splintered strings, broken ribcage clutching at the ocean for a heartbeat; buried hull scarring the midnight shore. Under a tin moon, I think how I could slip, unnoticed, across the marsh, leaving no impression in the sand.