incomplete confessions of wind
The sand is coming. Listen: no whisper aside from the atlantic's
low hum. absence illuminated in particle. Only there were boys
with sandpaper skin. The sand was white and so it was vast. The boys
needn't fear the ocean, nor did they fear their father's blue. They could
and couldn't have come from it, those minerals, dead and without
carcass – still, the boys held the shells like they would a strip
of bark, always a breakage before the hurl into an unknown
displacement. The moon was vast and so it was white, at this precise
distance. The boys didn't see it, off in the distance, the sand
falling mid-air in sheets. There was a towel six feet to my left, dancing
mid
-flight like a ripped flag. Like instinct, i wrapped it around my face as if
i knew how to survive this landscape; the boys,
silenced to their core. When birthed by midnight
sandstorm, the boys held me in their mouths like they would
Raghead – they didn't say it aloud. They needn't give it voice: the boys,
unmoving. White as bone, plucked and bleached for exhibit. In truth, it was my skin
who betrayed them. The boys with strawmat hair – i think one
was named jake – how he too reached for shelter, asked if i could help him
become me, like i wasn't warned of hands ghosted into land's
negative. Like i didn't recognize that face, rancid and speechless
the way, when cut open, a gall-bladder can leave an entire room gasping
and nauseous. The wind subsided. Perhaps i made it
all up – it was as if nothing happened: the boys resuming their small
-ness. A breeze receding into lullaby. In truth, there was nothing left to say – my feet
shifting
between salt and mineral, sinking into that earth,
unsteady – as if i was digging my own grave –
