Someone is seeing
A child in someone—
Is seeing a child in someone:

I’m turning rocks at the beach,
To find a crab beneath one of them,
A red one,
A real one.
Pretty in colour,
Pretty in eyes,
A fragment of life,
Small and hidden, waiting.

Amid the weight of days,
Density with no destiny
Buried in the sand,
Where the shining sun
Dresses itself in dusty lies,
An old, well-known fairy, fading
With each step of my footprints,
Melting with every grasp
Of my brave, clumsy toddler hands,
Clutching at cold necks;
Cold, cold for a moment—
One way.
You forget, you forget.
“You’ll never think of me again.”

Someone is watching—
Someone finds a crab,
Red,
Real.
I won’t forget.
I won’t forget.