The paralian sighs/
before cleaning his hands in a tide pool.
He speaks of bloodless wars and how those are often the hardest to win./
says he was much too far down the path of life/
before he realized that his manifest destiny didn't exist anywhere coast to coast./
says for too long he watched traffic lights change colors and let the red glow/
affect his mood.
He turns to me and laughs humorlessly./
says, "it's a bloodless war."/
then he looks away, out at the gray horizon,/
and says nothing./
I can't tell if he's at peace now/
or if the seaboard has just made him completely insane.
I walk away,
brushing the sand from my thighs/
and I wander into thoughts of foggy afternoons/
spent with you in a sleepy stupor./
I allow those grains of sand to fall through the cracks,/
immortalizing the moment/
in a snow globe-like casing.
I know I shouldn't stow such precious things on shelves/
but it's too risky to trust the fragility of memory.
I decide I don't like the sad man standing at the seaside./
it is clear to me that he didn't allow himself/
to enjoy enough of the messy, beautiful parts of life,/
like variegated skies, split open like scabs,/
or passionate scramblings over center consoles,/
and he reminds me of what I could have been/
had I not somehow triumphed in my own bloodless war.
There was something flimsy about existence/
that has since solidified./
It was gossamer-thin and terrifyingly out of reach for so long,/
unlike the palpable words that are now so heavy and opaque/
that they hang from wires in midair/
and light up as I pass,/
polychromatic and neon.
I hope the sad seaman can see words in real life too and not just on pages,/
I think, fleetingly, as I quicken my pace./
Then I decide that it doesn't matter./
I kick a stone the rest of the way home/
and imagine kicking it all the way to you,/
where you'd stop it under your foot and grin.
I leave the man behind.
The sky becomes bluer with every step.
I walk through a gate framed by yellow rose bushes./
I take a deep breath and exhale./
I can no longer smell the fetid shore;/
from here on out it is strictly smooth sailing.
I look up at the variegated sky./
It splits open like two French doors.
Like a scab.
