We chased the last shelf into the night, steel bow
spearing sheets of obsidian, unquenchable maw
folded on our vacant wake as spit and sallowed  
bile foams for what's left of humanity, sunless  
lips, salt-baked skin and lapping shores. "There  
she is," someone whispers, and the ship floods  
with silence, our faces slipped downstream like
the great waterways of old at a lone diamond cut  
from the sweat and gilded breaths of generations  
past, its jilted tip sunk from sleek abuse, salty pores  
and colder complexions, a last gasp of tepid air
before it goes under.