or the porthole of a cabin

where two girls dressed as boys

are not sleeping but kissing quietly

but urgently, legs crossed on a single

bed, the sheets rolled back like waves,

where above the bedside table a moth

keeps drifting towards the moon,

or is it the orange the girl, whose cabin this is,

pinched to ward off scurvy and keeps

forgetting to eat, white mould overcoming

the round fruit like light, rocking in its

divet now with the ship, now the bed,

and on the cabin’s dark wall shines

the moon, or is it the lamp

the captain gifted her for late-night

reading, or the circle

of silver she nailed there laughing,

stolen from the cook who ladled

hot broth over her hands

by accident, he claimed, after she

called him a crab-infested arsehole,

yes, its silver king smiles serenely

as the moon, but isn’t the moon,

and yet the moon is there,

somewhere, I mean, have you ever

seen a fuller moon, or is that her skin,

bare legs parting, climbing

onto this girl, o look at the moon,

look, or is that the pearl earring

she snatched from her mother’s

coffin before the tall men buried her

body in that open-mouthed grave,

and was it the moon then too, or her

mother’s bloodless cheeks, lighting

the way as she slunk off with her

trousers, her little bag of everything,

o was it the moon that drew in

the tide and the ship where she

could be a boy and therefore

nobody, and might it be the moon

not her kissing the girl, or might

the girl be the moon, how her skin

catches each dust mote like

the supposedly-gone sun,

or is that another moon, orbiting some

body even brighter, or darker, but heavier,

in the heart of our galaxy, orbiting

a girl’s breast, soft as light, or the moon?