August was a sincere month. I said I love you and I meant it. I said I love you in so many ways; tritely and like people do everyday with whimsy and passion and joy. I wrote our names in the sand, I kissed you brashly in restaurants, crowded streets, in the relief of the rain one day in that hot glimmering month. I breathed your name under sheets and I let you watch me as I danced to music while I cooked in a kitchen that was a little too small for us both to be in at the same time. I let you think I didn't know you were watching; laughing so quietly, loving so loudly from the doorway. Put another record on! I called over the song, fading to an end. We didn't have a record player but it would have been nice; to have had everything in the room with us. The music, the crackle, those voices, the garlic frying, the wine, you + I, the increasingly familiar voices over the T.V. next door. The moon waiting outside.
It's about 7pm and it's dark. A boot heel on the stoop. She is the coat that I wrap around myself in November, the wind that reddens and weathers my face.
And that sound, that sound is the second, that sound is the beat, that sound is the sea, keeping time. When I was a child I was told that if you hold a big seashell to your ear, the sound you hear is the sea. What do I sound like to you I wonder in the early hours of the morning, as I turn on my side to see your sleeping mouth.