The sea is green
and the sky
is grey.
The inbetween
is white
and then
there is no
inbetween.
The waves were
quiet and flat for hours
and then wind came
with gull chatter,
and now the waves
curl and crash in
unruly beats,
as the horizon
smiles, seeming to
nod also, the
murmurations
thickening, all the shapes
like arrows and roaring
toothy mouths, the pier
beneath them
holding fast.
(She called it
an eyesore and I
called her ignorant.
She’s being ignorant
elsewhere now).
A man dances
and another sits
on the pebbles
with a cigarette.
A girl with a sad dog
speaks to herself
ignoring the dog,
and a kid
falls in a puddle
but doesn’t cry.
Each of them
smile at me
when we make
eye contact
and I nod but
don’t smile back.
Only half-way there.
I move on alone
because today is a day
for being alone.
Today is a day
that should not be –
an eighth day
in the middle of
the eleventh week
of a thirty-fourth year.
The dancing man,
the smoking man,
the external
monologue girl,
sad dog, and kid in
the puddle
all know it.
It’s why they smile like
the horizon, nodding also.
It’s why they let
me disappear.
Today isn’t real, but it’s
a day on which
I will often
meditate
for years to come.
My dream self
told me, ‘Time is
a construct
and science is
a fiction like
language.’
My beach companions
all know this too –
Nods of awareness
and smiles of knowhow.
There’s no candidness
and authenticity, just
a guessing game
in the end.
I made some
bad guesses
and now I think
I’m making
some good ones.
The inbetween
knows it, the reason it
turned white
and then vanished
on this steely march.
And now I perch
up high and wait
for the rain, foolishly.
I wait for answers
I know won’t come.
I wait for fight or flight
knowing that I always freeze.
Fools always freeze.
And once a fool, always so.
