Pirate's Cove

There's a trail that is more of a
collapsed staircase: a cavernous
fold in the hill’s hip-side
that you can take if your knees are
fine.
and even if they are not, the desire to
show a boy-- your adventurous side
could be enough
to catapult down crevice and
slide your dog across slippery stream
to coax both animals
over the parts where
there really is no good way
When you reach the sand,
the boy, tall and coffee skinned
finds a rock to sit on and goes quiet
makes you feel guilty for
thinking you were not alone
you sit on your own trying not to
stare at him
Having to remind yourself, that
the sea is what you've come for.
Your dog digs a little patch in the sand
but so littered in rocks is the shrinking shore,
that he huffs and looks at you like
no
the boy is still looking at the horizon
His brown eyes are hands,
holding onto something out there
a railing of beauty
You know you are everything that could loosen
a man's grip
the sweat, the wind, the woman-ness of you
you feel something touch your side.
But when you check it is
your own hip-fat
touching your rib fat
and the line between them, of separation
really one of
closeness.
Before you head back, the boy
crouch down next to your dog, who has found someplace to lay
His bright white fur against the
black sand; his dampened paws
like four wet birds
The boy's hands articulate over your dog’s scruff
kneading his shoulders and neck
You move your hands to meet his
on the animal between you and
for the moment, your four paws together look like
bodies walking a white sand
Back at the lot, his hug goodbye is like a seagull, pecking
at something he being
held hostage by
a woman
For the next two mornings, you wake up
strapped to the mattress
and
scrape from the bowl of memory
every last morself
like you will your
buckwheat cereal
as if you are not your own feeder
as if you are not
your own master
A blue heron flies up to your
window to say something about aloneness
but you are only thinking of what it will be like
when he kisses you
but it is even hard to imagine
at the end of every scenario you conjure
your face and his face are like
the wrong ends of two magnets
they cannot will not do it
When she was small, four or five, your mother
used to take a piece of white bread,
given by her mother,
to a remote corner of the
house
and there she would crouch,
ball up the slice in her small hands, tight
and even tighter-- a small moon,
and for as long as she could make it last,
she would take small
--even smaller than that--
bites
making it last, pretending that
everything that could be given her
already had.
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