There are times I imagine a wide beach
Inundated with pools of brackish, dull water
It is eaten in large swaths by sea birds and clouds
The ocean breaks, droning in frothy gulps

I am watching this from the cracked concrete
Full of out of season crab legs
In a town that hums with children in the summer
But now, in the late winter, stands still
With the sharp coldness of hard sand
And water that matches the sky in its dearth of warmth

There is no one here but me
And people I don’t quite know, but am sharing
A drab two bed room with, rustling beneath
Scratchy cum stained unwashed sheets

You make me cry with your crystalline youth
Which I see in the empty beach
And its fragile hold on the world slipping
Slipping granularly away with the paint
Of your fingers beneath the lukewarm bath
We share, your nipples bubble enshrouded
And your back pressed into me, all liquidy and warm

Somehow this reminds me that you will die
We will all die, and it makes such little sense
Here watching the horses out in the grey cold
(I am imagining all of this, but especially you dying)
But then again I am wearing off two martinis
And the buttery slop of a crab shack

When we are older, me older than you,
I will walk past your house one evening
Seeing you knelt in a bed of some flower
Distinctly bent in the gloaming
We will know nothing of one another then
But this beach and the belly ache of dried seafood
Which is more than I know of almost anyone
Though it does not seem like so much to know
When your cold feet slip across the bed
Waking me enough to wonder if I am really awake
Until I smell the stale wine of your breath
And notice my mouth is full of your lilac hair