a cigarette by the shore

after i rub the sleep from my eyes i stand and look out the window at the sand in the dunes outside and i think. i think about the grains and their stories, of travel and homes lost and found. a seagull cries and in the pebbles in the sand a hermit crab dies quietly while across the ocean its cousin squirms in a vague pain. as i take a drag from my cigarette and the ember flares an old woman rants politics at the vietnamese liquor store clerk while he looks down at the register thinking of his family back east. i don’t get out much anymore, i think. i don’t do what i dreamed of on june nights when the blankets were too hot and the sweat beaded on your brow. i think too much now, and when i do it’s of you and it hurts how little i feel. i’m forgetting how to love you. i’m forgetting the feel of your lips and the sound of your feet on the shower floor as i wrapped my arms around you and kissed your neck. i’m forgetting you and it’s good. as the image of your blue eyes fades from the pair in my mind a frog croaks in the scummy pond behind the lot behind my house. the seagull cries again but this time it’s distant and wavering, and as my cigarette sputters its last i think of how you would have never let me smoke and i find myself glad that you’re gone. who would have thought, who would have thought.

the floorboards creak as i carry myself back to bed.