Up there—
a woman, far off in the distance.
Down on the beach we gather together
but she’s just sitting alone
on the shoulder of the road
at the edge of the scene.

Pignose’s Ma left their house and never came back. Was Pignose her Da’s child, or was she not? On the rocky road her big high heels quivered and clattered through the villagers’ fishy tales; but it didn’t matter how many times Pignose stumbled, she kept on walking. She never turned around or looked back, just kept on walking to that distant town. Over the rocky road, and even over rough waves, in those heels, her feet could keep on walking.

Down on the beach
we’re in our bright blue one-piece bathing suits
and our colorful striped bikinis
(in your twenties it all fits in, zero flesh spills over)
and our bodies proudly accept the strength of summer’s rays.
It’ll be many decades before we see
the grains of sand in the scene: us.

The crashing of the waves seems to have stopped. My child ran toward—here.
Someone witnessed her, that she ran almost to the road. That day it swallowed the children, who ran without turning back. Sea. Sea is forever sea. Here is a school, the roof of a school; if we have made it here our children must have run toward here. Here is a school, the school they went to every day; here are classrooms, here are friends; they must have thought if they reached here something could be done. I don’t want here to be demolished. There were children who ran toward here. If not toward here, where would we go? The child. Me. It’s already too hard to know.

Toward—far off
in the distance—a man.
Their eyes look so similar, these people curled in the hull of the ship.
At the end of each gaze is just the dark sea of the night.
So many eyes.
These gazes will never meet
because there’s simply no way to see anything.
They feel their bodies float along, carried
by the rocking of the ship, innards
bobbing with the waves.

I knew what I was running from. Crossed many, many seas. Now again, crossing the sea, trying to get away from here. No money no matter how hard I worked, not much anyway, good grades at school didn’t get me much either, and did I know the lowest lows, no, I didn’t know, I found meals and a bed, I was none the wiser. Looking back, finding just me, myself, the one I wanted to erase, and there was an eraser, I jumped to grab it. Salty sea wind opens the nostrils, licks the screeching sole of the ear, ah yes, sinking into the unseen sea, wondering how long has passed.

since then
how long has passed