12/25

Last night I found you and me on a beach somewhere where the water lapped up on the sand like slopping mouthfuls of garbled words. waves fell and rose eastward like men kneeling in prayer. The meeting was peaceful and silent and the night sky was bright low in the distance as the horizon pushed daylight upward into sight. I hoped that lightning might strike and strike and the sand would turn to glass.

When I woke the memory was vague but the sensation of being near you clung to me. The feeling lingered, the feeling that nothing existed outside of the two feet of space we kept between our bodies.

Then today I was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike and every crooked tree that sat against the rapidly darkening day was an angry tangle of spines. The sky was orange and the bark was black and the landscape laughed at such unrealistic hues.