Today, you tell me you will die soon, jealous
of an old man dogwalking the dunes
who has mixed his bigotry with talk of coal ships
on that muddy straight.
It is late, the power station is an ice-cube
across the mica flats, and cider stymies us.
We have not reached the eyelid wreck; instead
you say it now, by the stilt-legged beacon —
lonely as a Tove Jansen sketch.
60, tipsy, and suddenly intent. I wonder
how a metal shack on limpet steps
survives on sand? I have a secret.
It will be she who goes, while you persist
in years of alcohol and stress. Across the water,
the plant is floodlit by a nuclear glow.
My camera out, I whir and click.