Daily Poem: April 5

Beach vacation



The lifeguard looks down and says
he can see my parents in the distance,
and it looks like they’ve found
the woman for me.

We’ve been at work all morning
extracting an ancient bedframe
beautifully preserved in centuries of sand.

Its carvings will take years to interpret.

We eat our breakfast
under the lifeguard’s whistle
and watchful eye.

I close my eyes against the sun
and we’re all in the bed together.

Someone asks me to stroke their hair,
someone else says to be quiet, but it’s hopeless;
there’s too much kidding around.

We get up and walk to the library
in our bare feet
to perform the ritual:

Two shot glasses each,
and you light them on fire,

so these ten tiny flames
breathe life into pages.

When I wake up,
the room is red and I’m under the covers,
fevered with sunstroke.

I should know better
than to spend my days digging
at the beach like a child.