Mortgage-bruised pilgrims
linger along Silver Strand,
pop caps against plywood boarding,
edges furred with salt-rust flakes
from storms that chewed the pier.

Seabee retirees
swap tide updates on porch steps;
third-generation surfers
stitch wax into their palms
and still call this south jetty 'church'.

Here my son and I rinsed sand
from our ankles with a garden hose,
him shrieking, laughing, shivering
when cold bit his feet.

I once yelled at him, raging
for dropping keys into surf,
as if that mattered more
than a day of chasing, wrestling in the tide.
He doesn’t remember.
I can’t forget.

Now, he’s taller than me,
vanishing downshore.

I stand outside, voices rise
in the salt-hard wind.
Barbecue smoke drifts
from driveways, tailgates,
settles into dusk-lit lawn chairs.

Boarded bungalows peel to raw board,
splintering porch rails;
nails weep orange along the grain.

A bike frame, chainless,
reddens into memory beside dune grass
still gripping sand.

There is grace in forgetting:
a tide lowers its voice,
sand swallows what was said.

i don't know how old i was, 8 or 10.

I climbed out the window
onto the roof of the garage.

it was summer.

I lied down
and gazed at the stars for hours.

i reached to touch moonbeams,
and with my finger
drew a circle around the north star.

i dissolved into the hush of stars
free of want or need.

a single heart beat.
I, the wind, moon, stars.

I long to lie on the roof, again,
gaze at the stars
and filled with wonder.

I carry your hands like waves breaking on the skin
your eyes get flammable like capsicum on innocent tongue
I have long conversations with this boiling sea
the sea bears the roundness of the moon
the moon reveals its wounds
the wounds shed their skins to feed
an undiscovered earth

I feel time running like a wild animal tnrough my body
the air might hide from itself in the frenzy of an embrace
the molecules of emotion create the music of muscles, of spheres
I watch this momentum of life unfolding, rising and decreasing
passion feeds the wind, the waters, the eartquakes, it dances on liminal edges
bound and unbound the pulse of creation, of destruction
I am so very quiet, as quiet as the retina that translates the light
when the light touches you my optic nerves get burned but look
how strange,
I see further away into the clarity of hands

slowly the mountains come out of the blue of morning,
they regain their face
light bathes them in its milk
I hide in the tall grass like a child
this self expands into the clouds behind the trees
an engulfing joy dissolves words into vowels
everything that exists  is wonder, a forgotten state of matter
time confesses a circle
the circle conjures  an earth so wild
the forest stores its prayers inside moss
the sacred hidden in the most profane  flower
an work of art with unknown author, every atom is colourful
I offer my skin as playground for butterflies
they can feel she's not so different from the skin of the earth
some hours are born by the self of rain
I wonder if the wind feels me
like I feel you in blooming nails

What makes life meaningful?

Understanding another's

pain and suffering–perhaps.

The air dances around you and silence looks
different now. The Dead Sea is alive again, stillness acquires a
name, the world quivers on a beach
covered with blind seashells. A giant who has come down
from the mountains is posing for a naive painter. Only
eagles feel
planetary alignment, they are the only ones who can
understand man's amazed look when the woman
comes riding a thirsty gryphon. Whatever is left of life
takes refuge in your dreams. The shade of the harbour is
only generous with the spleeping statues. Every day arises
from the blazing calendar, close to the scream of the siren
out at large. The past blooms out of the rock in the sea and
weighs on your heart. The sand hesitates: I am the
beginning.
In the red cells I see only you. Even the blind see the world
again
through the eyes of their own memories. Doing survey
missions
on the maps of the world, the dolphins ask
the purple red colour of the next eon whether night comes
from beyond words

by Ionel Bota, translated by Lidia Vianu

in the laboratory of life unseen words are sprouting
they decenter time or they hit themselves against
the windows like birds do
they circle the emotional memory of our aorta
they smell of dust mixed with blood
they search for that place in your gaze where
is never too hot

There was once a child
born beneath the sign
of unburial.

She carried too much—
not in arms
but in tethered memory.
Things with no names,
only weights.

A cracked watch
that ticked in reverse.
A button from a coat
that no one had worn
in three generations.

A feather
from a bird
dreamt once
by her grandmother,
never seen again.

She believed—
as those marked by absence do—
that keeping meant remembering,
and remembering meant
nothing would vanish.

Others crossed her path,
offered to help unfasten the straps.
She refused.
They did not know
which talismans bled
and which only looked like wounds.

So she walked.
Through salt seasons,
through bone-rattling frost,
through forests with no floor
and skies that never asked her name.

The bag grew heavier.
She grew cleverer.
Silent.

And then—
on a day that wasn’t special,
under a sun that wasn’t kind—
she set it down.
Not as surrender.
As an experiment.

The earth did not crack.
The ghosts did not scatter.
Her shadow did not abandon her.

She sifted the contents.
Some were dust.
Some were still singing.
Some curled away like dried petals
and begged to be left behind.

She took a key.
She took the bell.
She left the rest
for the moss.

She walked on.

Not lighter, exactly—
but less governed
by the shape
of her grief.

You and I—
we feel,
we love,
we regret.
Yet we remain
the binding particle
of a formless self.

They divide us,
pit us against each other.
We found safety
for thirteen days.

Before dawn,
we felt the breath
that seeps through cracks
into minds like a narrow thread of force,
and the fog spilled out.

Above our heads, false stars
created by warm bodies
to annihilate
what passed through the gate
of a birthing woman.

We write words to conjure
happy endings
at the ball of extermination
that tears apart
the pulsing light
of a thousand veins.

Please sit with me
before you go
Do you feel it—
the mourning procession
of human beings
transforming into a state of fission
and drifting away?

And a sigh is so sad
of trembling atoms
when the victim becomes the destroyer.

Feel the force of the fall,
and do not shatter hope
even if the world
trembles to its core
because there is still YOU,
still ME,
and still

OTHERS.