Seaside

96

Your body eased away by the salt and silt of the ocean.

I am at the Pacific again.

Holding the mist in my palms is like holding a ghost.

Here we tried to burn the sand. Here we wrote letters

to the shallows in a language made of stone.

And here we sprawled like a scattering of opal and tourmaline.

You are becoming a memory that I visit like a grave

that I drop myself into.

You are a cube of sugar that I break with my teeth again and again.

The coast has become your body lying on its side

each wave slipping forward saying

hush hush.

hush