shore to shore

Artwork by Aldwin Li, staff artist

last night, i saw you in a dream,

a memory enveloping me in waves.

this one brought fishnets full of sun-kissed arms and new year’s eve fireworks,

full of embraces gone stale, of dry-pressed flowers,

sea salt kisses with no sweet endings, brought in with the tide.

a stoplight blinks and a train rushes by, scattering evening light

tinted gold by paintbrushes, the handles broken.

now, nothing is tangible except the splinters in our hands.

each current brings us closer to a shoreline

that reminds me of places we can no longer go, the horizon inseparable

from skies splashed with lemonade.

i keep fishing for fragments of sea glass, cracked at the edges.

mahogany driftwood. diaphanous curtains

fluttering in the music room. unfulfilled promises and plastic necklaces.

glassy skies, edges rounded by the beating of waves.