Her bioluminescence casts shadows

on the cavern’s cold, wet deep-sea walls,

reeling round like a carousel that glows

in Neptune’s silent, coral-toothed halls.

There are terrors written within the light

of her heart, that jellyfish aglow

and aquiver in endless depths of night

within the sea’s saltwater grotto.

Tongues twist and twine like sea slugs from conch shells,

tasting the other, a frank meeting

that stirs the blood to race in ocean swells—

a frenzied shiver of sharks eating.

He does not know how long her appetite

may be stayed, nor the strength of this love

that brought him low, away from sunlight,

but knows it better than most above,

for when her hunger waxes like the tide

and she swallows his heart at long last,

she will add it to the strange glow inside

and be brighter than day by contrast.