I've read several of your pieces with pleasure, but that extended metaphor drew me to click the Follow button. (I follow relatively few people.) Very well done.
I know that your piece is more about first lines, but I'll submit the last lines of The Tragically Hip's "Nautical Disaster," as crafted a work of art as any:
Anyway, Susan, if you like
Our conversation is as faint a sound in my memory
As those fingernails scratching on my hull.