Untimely #7 – Ambergris My Gander

...nose to steamed porthole, the smell of pennies, a mouth of copper. Blood, for he bites the lip senseless out of habit. Boredom. Its salty tang frightens and refreshes him. Backing slightly from the blackened glass he touches two fingers to his lip. It’s only small – snakebite, a puncture either side of the fleshy center. He wipes the condensation from the glass. Black night. He cannot tell the water from the sky. Inside a greenish haze from dimlit lamps and a smell of socks. Old socks like wet bread and mushrooms and the underside of rocks. He runs his fingers across his lips and tries to see in the window but it is only a ghost that looks back at him. No sign of the blood that trickles to the corner of his mouth like when the old and infirm – dried like paper, like elephants, like biltong, like cement – forget to drink, forget to lick their lips or dab the corners of their mouths with handkerchiefs and work the saliva into a paste. He has seen amber rivers of tobacco juice flowing down the creases of weathered faces on the ship; salted and cured by the spray and wind, they’ll outlast the pharaohs, he’ll warrant. Men who look like strands of rope, with yellow nails and teeth and eyes and hairy ears the better to balance with. Men who cannot now return to shore without the blinding drunk to give that list they’ve come to know so well. He can feel the blood drying like paint and wonders whether he can pick it off or if he should just leave it, wash it in the morning. Remembers waking as a child with the hot blood coursing down his neck and throat, his pillow soaked, and how it caked below his eyes and in his fingernails. Mother screaming what’s he done, what’s he done! Holding his head back until it stopped, the salty snotty drip drip down his throat that made him gag, then dabbing at his cheeks with a moistened cloth. Now he could feel it dry and the taste fading and he pressed his head once more against the coolness of the glass, feeling his breath fog the window and wondering if she missed him like he missed her.