June

they found the bones of a deer, bleached stone-white by the beating 

sun. covered in red and wet. i take a fragment in my hand, think 

of her heart, slow reliable beat, almost

still. stagnant water, stuck in the summer mud.

june sings: bugs buzzing, the angry, melodic whir of a lawnmower. 

we are all here for the very last time.

we make a shrine on the island. shells,

mentos, plastic bags. they keep whatever faith

they have left in the backs of their throats,

i swallow mine like bile. a crazed prayer

held close to her chest. gray weaves through the waves.

i pick it up, let it pass through

the blue. it flows with the tide, 

breathing. fragments of something bigger–

long gone. we stand together, feet sinking in soft brown sand,

watching the swirling, moving the gray through the slow, 

reliable waves. i stay a moment longer.

shells piercing the bottoms of my feet, the wind, the wet–

i take account of whats left. i offer it to the sea.