Now the earth knows your body better than I do. Now the dirt
cradles you like a new mother—two brown hands
smoothing out a blanket for your bones. I guess I met you

by accident, at Ghost Beach, where the low winds beat at
bare ankles, where the feral cats chew on easy meat, where the
cabin cruisers smack against the water like angry fists. I went there because

I noticed the bell had started ringing again. I can't abide noise, no sir, my body demands a special kind of quiet—a coffin buried so deep that god himself would forget to rapture the poor soul inside. That's what led me to the sand. I wanted a

thin coast dotted with coral, I wanted ancient shells pressed to my ears, I wanted
an orange sun and a dark body and more life. You were different. You
wanted an exit. You wanted the pearly tides to undress you, to strip your

skin clear off, to husk you back down to guts and bones. I never saw such
a sad moth as you, all curled up in the summer surf, pale as a winter foot,
praying little prayers for absolution. Tell me, O winged one, when you finally

dipped a toe into the big scary blue,
was it because yours was ringing too?