My mother enjoyed shrieking
by the luminous Atlantic.
A place where she was sure
the salmon were scant, like
the bleach dumps, threatened
by a figure who loved binding
her to thoughts of terror.

Our hands were rough, at the
time -- so much so that we
would grasp at glass in the
white sand, pressing the edges
against calluses, without feeling,
before hurling the fragments
into the endlessness.

The sun would sit on the pink
and orange carpet of the sky.
And we would join it, with our
striped bottoms in the coarseness.

Praying for the glass to return;
asking for each piece to be sharpened,
so that we may be able to feel.