After reading the poem a third time I came away with a sexual interpretation, after the fourth reading I went online and looked at my Myspace profile. My friends and I posted pictures of ourselves with broad bellying sails we’d glide to the wind tossing green water from our sharp prows. I had a message from the boy I had been crushing on; the message suggested reading the yachts sailing only over the masses was wrong. Such a reading didn’t take into account the entire picture of the yachts; the yachts sailed over a deep, vast ocean that was greater than the bloodied surface; the image didn’t include the sky the yachts sailed under nor the space the yachts sailed through.

The previous week I messaged him telling him I had gotten my own place in San Francisco and I was about to start working in the porn industry. His response:

Subject: Brooklyn is a cold place in the fall

Body: That is really great you are finally getting out on your own. Some of my friends have been talking about making a trip to San Francisco. Be careful. Are you sure you want to do porn? I’ve known quite a few people who have gone down that path and it’s not always what it seems. When we decide to go to SF I’ll let you know. I’d love to meet you in person.

xoxox
Lugh

Everything alive can be construed as a yacht, I thought, swimming across all that has gone on before. The boy I fell in love with, Lugh, added me on Myspace. He was a singer-songwriter based in Brooklyn. I liked his music so I sent him poems I’d written. He was a few years older than me so it made sense that he had more to offer artistically. I took everything he gave greedily because he and his creations were beautiful. When we first became online friends I never expected much to happen, he was a struggling artist and I was a live-in sex slave.