All adventurers have contingency plans.

Say a man chooses the sea, wants to feel the wind
           curl under his coat sleeves, wants salt
       in his eyes, wants deep swells he can ride
  like his own unbroken pony.
                                               But he’s afraid

of the bottomless: someday it might pull him under,
            tumble his bones into rocks for polishing,
        split his belly like a seed bag of pearls.
   It’s happened before.
                                     So he’ll clutch

at what he can in the moment of his wreck—
            a board, a box, an oar—wrap his body around
        its single thin hip, cling haplessly
   to the merciful object
                         that floats.

But when a man tells you this in bed after he’s had his very
           last drink, are you the oar? Or is it the drink?
      As if one is less an act of desperation
  than
           the other.

Who knows what his name might become in the morning:
           drowned, lost, pulled from the waves.
      Staying afloat isn’t a plan, isn’t any
  kind of
             rescue.

Even you, in his arms, have to try not to be afraid.