Salt in the air
Grit on my legs
Smoke in my lungs

578 days on and my only memories of you have been swallowed by the lapping tongue of the sea, have I ever seen you somewhere other than the edge of an unforgiving ocean? Did we spend all of our formative years splashing and smiling? Did we only spend so much time on the water because you or I or both of us loved it?

If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can see you elsewhere. At the end of a carpeted hallway, doubled over in a laugh shaking the walls. Drunk in the back of a car, wrestling with a seat belt. Perched on the top of a structure we used as a degenerate hangout, adjusting your camera. But still, the vision of you on a beach or cliff are the ones that sit on top of my portraits and stills in my mind.  

I find myself by the sea on your birthday, the second one you haven’t seen. Do we celebrate without you? Do we celebrate for you? I pick up sand in my fingers and whisper secrets meant for you and let them slip back through the cracks, the gossip filled grains meet the earth and I hope they scatter to you. I can only see your face by the water, I hear your laugh in the waves, and I wonder if you live in every swell and crash. Where do you live for other people?

When it is my time to go, will I be returned to the sea the same as you,
and will you meet me there?

Sometimes I go weeks without thinking of my mother
She is lost to the healing and distance and peace
But like everything there is an opposite
And there are days where I can’t stop seeing, hearing, fearing
I see her when my hair gets long
I hear her when I pick up objects
“Broom, milk, paper”
I feel her when I run my fingers over the texture of my face
Sometimes my partner wakes me up at night
And tells me I’ve been crying and fighting
She visits me in my dreams
But I’m small again
And she’s big again
I can’t escape her because I haven’t grown yet
I haven’t learned yet
I don’t have the strength yet
All the things I will learn years ahead
Can’t help me while she holds my head underwater
So I inhale my tears
And push against my pillows
And wake up crying out for a mother

On tip toes with hushed voices,
Drunk on novelty and cheap drinks
Into your bedroom,
decorated with intentional pretentious artifacts

“Pick me up, ask about me”
your stacks of books ache

“Compliment me”
your freshly laundered bedspread whispers

“You don’t even know me”
your obscure music posters boast

I do not answer them, I breathe in deep
Scented like evergreens and detergent
I’ll remember this more than anything,
The posters blank and books wordless in my memory
But the pine and soap lingers eternal

Kisses that taste like lemons and revelry
Breaths that sound like inhaling exultation
Soft, quiet movements choreographed
Like we aren’t strangers to each other,
Like our bones had been lying in wait,
Separated by time and space for eons,
Pulsing under our skin to meet again
And again and again and again